DSFAS-CIN: CREATING OPPORTUNITIES FOR VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION IN CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURE IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES

The overarching goal of this project isto contribute to national-scale efforts by USDA to achieve reduced carbon emissions from the agriculture sector through adoption of voluntary, incentive-based climate-smart agriculture (CSA).Our project focuses on restoration of mesic ecosystems(i.e., wetlands, riparian zones, wet meadows)in rangelands of the western United States (U.S). Mesic ecosystems in the western U.S. store large amounts of carbon and have high potential for carbon dioxide removal relative to other rangeland ecosystems.Furthermore, the majority of mesic ecosystems (approximately75%) in the western U.S. are on privately owned agricultural lands.Mesic restoration has well-known benefits for climate adaptation (i.e., increasing water availability) and biodiversity conservation,but the potential role of restoring mesic ecosystems as a climate mitigation (i.e., greenhouse gas storage) intervention is unknown. Programs that focus on working with farmers and ranchers to restore degraded mesic ecosystems could contribute to USDA goals for CSA, but a monitoring system to quantify climate mitigation benefits associated with mesic restoration is lacking.In this proposal, we 1) Develop satellite-based workflows for monitoring of climate-smart restoration in mesic ecosystems;2)Produce time-series maps of climate adaptation (water availability), climate mitigation (greenhouse gas flux and storage) and essential biodiversity habitat in mesic ecosystems, as well as the economic value of carbon stored in mesic ecosystems;3) Quantify additionality associated with mesic restoration; and 4)Create a 'Guidebook for Mesic Restoration' for the agricultural community that integrates insights from our Coordinated Innovation Network with the geospatial tools and results from Obj. 1 - 3. Our research will contribute knowledge to the development of landowner incentives for CSA in the western U.S through federal (e.g., Farm Bill) and state policy.The satellite-based monitoring and verification workflows that we develop will be fully open source, and can be replicated in future years and in other regions.