Recipient Organization
BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY
1910 UNIVERSITY DRIVE
BOISE,ID 83725
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
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.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
50%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Problem:The U.S. strives to reduce economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52% by the year 2030. The USDA has pledged to contribute to this nationwide effort by reducing agricultural emissions through voluntary, incentive-based"climate-smart agriculture" (CSA). CSA includes agricultural practices that enable farmers to simultaneously a) adapt to the negative effects of climate change, and b) mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon dioxide and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.Agricultural systems across the U.S. are incredibly diverse, and for broad uptake by the agricultural community, CSA practices will need to fit the local context.Knowledge Gap:There is a lack of knowledge about how farmers and ranchers in the western U.S. can most effectively contribute to U.S. climate goals. The restoration of mesic ecosystems (i.e., wetlands, riparian zones, wet meadows)could be a "keystone" CSA practice in the West, because of its potential contribution to climate adaptation, climate mitigation, and biodiversity conservation. Approximately75% of all mesic ecosystems in the western U.S. are on privately-owned agricultural lands, and incentives that motivate mesic restoration could provide large climate benefits in these landscapes. However, the western U.S. does not have a coordinated, voluntary, incentive-based mesic restoration program. Furthermore, a monitoring system to systematically quantify the outcomes and economic value of mesic restoration is lacking.Project Objectives:The overarching goal of our project is to support opportunities for western ranchers and farmers to participate in CSA. We build upon our 2019 USDA "Seed" grant by developingsatellite-based workflowsto measureclimate adaptation, mitigation, and biodiversity services provided by mesic restoration in the West.Our study focuses on rangeland-dominated regions of Idaho, Oregon and Montana, which are already experiencing severe effects of climate change. Landowners are engaging in adaptation strategies focused on mesic ecosystem restoration, and thoughtful, incentive-based CSA policy design should lead to high rates of landowner adoption and satisfaction. To provide a bridge between USDA programs and on-the-ground activities, our project focuses on four objectives.1.Develop satellite-based workflows for monitoring of climate-smart restoration in mesic ecosystems in the semi-arid western U.S.2.Produce maps of a) climate adaptation (water availability), b) climate mitigation (greenhouse gas flux and storage) and c) essential biodiversity habitat, as well as d) the economic value of carbon stored in mesic ecosystems.3.Quantify additionality of climate adaptation, climate mitigation, biodiversity habitat from mesic restoration practices.4.Create a "Guidebook for Mesic Restoration" for the agricultural community that integrates insights from our Coordinated Innovation Network activities with the geospatial tools and results from Obj. 1 - 3.
Project Methods
3.1 Objective 1: Develop satellite-based workflows for monitoring of climate-smart restoration in mesic ecosystemsIn our first objective, we continue the development of mesic ecosystem monitoring products that use repeatable, automated workflows to create wall-to-wall time-series of mesic resources from freely-available satellite imagery. We integrate data from multiple sensors (Sentinel optical, Sentinel radar, Landsat (optical), and Lidar) and we make advancements in the use of deep learning and transfer learning approaches, which will enable us to monitor mesic ecosystems in new study regions with minimal training datasets for each new effort (Borowiec et al. 2022, Martins et al. 2022). We will develop three different mesic monitoring products that will have a variety of applications for mesic monitoring in the western U.S., and these products will directly feed into the modeling outlined in Objective 2.3.2Objective 2:Produce maps of a) climate adaptation (water availability), b) climate mitigation (greenhouse gas flux and storage) and c) essential biodiversity habitat, as well as d) the economic value of carbon stored in mesic ecosystems.In Obj. 2, we develop models that use our mesic ecosystem maps from Obj. 1 to estimate a) climate adaptation (water availability), b) climate mitigation (greenhouse gas flux and carbon storage), and biodiversity habitat. We will also develop a model for economic valuation of carbon based on the currently accepted "social cost of carbon". These maps will provide a consistent measurement of ecosystem services and economic benefits provided by mesic ecosystems, and will be direct inputs into calculating additionality from mesic restoration as outlined in Objective 3.3.3 Objective 3:Quantify additionality of climate adaptation, climate mitigation, biodiversity habitat from mesic restoration practicesIn this objective, we will use case study restoration sites and matched control sites (i.e. sites that are similar, but no restoration activity has occurred) to estimate additionality associated with mesic restoration. Additionality is defined as the extra benefit (e.g., available water, carbon) that is gained from an intervention (in this case, the restoration) that would not exist in the absence of the intervention. In the absence of randomized control studies, we will use counterfactual (i.e. quasi-experimental) statistical techniques to quantify the impact of mesic restoration relative to the business-as-usual conditions. A major criticism of current offset programs is that they fail to empirically estimate program crediting errors due to the unobservable nature of the counterfactual scenarios (Badgely et al., 2021). Quasi-experimental counterfactual analysis overcomes these criticisms and have become an increasingly common approach for testing impacts of interventions at broad spatial scales with observational data from remote sensing. To ensure high confidence in additionality claims, current voluntary carbon standards are now adopting statistical matching to estimate project impacts to more accurately credit projects based on claims of GHG removals (e.g., VCS Methodology for Afforestation, Reforestation and Revegetation Projects). We will align our statistical matching workflow with these VCS carbon project standards, and improve upon them based on emerging counterfactual analytical approaches (e.g., synthetic control machine learning; Xu 2017) to calculate additionality of all three of our ecosystem services and carbon market values from Objective 2.3.4. Objective 4: Create a "Mesic Restoration Guidebook" for the agricultural community that integrates insights gained from the CIN activities with the geospatial tools and results from Objectives 1 - 3.The overarching goal of our project is to support the agricultural community to make evidence-based decisions about how to adapt to and mitigate climate change, while at the same time maintaining or even improving farm viability.Findings from our research will be published in academic journals because the insights will be valuable to scholars focusing on climate smart agriculture, data science, remote sensing, mesic resource restoration. However, it is equally important that we provide information for practitioners and producers engaged in mesic restoration efforts as well (Fry et al., 2018; Hoffman, 2021). The goal is to both provide data and analytical tools that help guide mesic restoration (Obj 1 - 3) as well as provide practical information to the diverse members of the agricultural community about benefits, challenges, and opportunities in mesic restoration.CIN activities:We will conduct CIN activities throughout the life of the proposed project.Among our team, we have dozens of practitioners and producers who are interested in mesic restoration and climate smart agriculture, who we have listed in Project Management Plan, andwe feel confident that our network will grow as we continue engaging with our partners. In Year 1, we will create a list-serv that include all interested parties, and initiate communication with our large network. In Year 2, we will begin our first set of activities. First, we will conductvirtual "round tables", which will be 1.5-hour monthly sessions, with each session focused on a specific topic associated with mesic restoration. Topic examples include: first stages of implementing mesic restoration; program incentives for mesic restoration; available data on decision-support platforms, and other important topics as identified by our CIN and project partners. Next, we will hold one in-person workshop within each of the three study regions. For example, our southern Idaho workshop will take place at the TNC-Idaho demonstration farm. These workshops will also focus on various topics, including demonstration of decision-support data tools, and opportunities for producers to participate in CSA programs.