Impacts of California’s climate-relevant land use policy scenarios on terrestrial carbon emissions (CO2 and CH4) and wildfire risk

Land-use and -cover change (LUCC) is globally important to climate change mitigation. However, using land-based strategies to support aggressive subnational greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets is challenging due to competing land use priorities and uncertainty in ecosystem carbon dynamics and climate change effects. We used the California natural and working lands carbon and greenhouse gas model to quantify the direct ecosystem carbon emissions (CO ₂ and CH ₄) impacts, trade-offs, and climate change interactions of two policy scenarios identified by the State of California for fulfilling multiple land use goals, including the competing goals of mitigating wildfire severity and landscape carbon emissions, among others. Here we show that emissions from desired forest management to reduce the amount of combustible biomass (fuel reduction) initially outweighed emissions reductions from other strategies (e. g. less intensive forest management, restoration, land conservation) ; however, avoided emissions and enhanced carbon sequestration from the other strategies gradually outweighed fuel reduction emissions. Thus, in jurisdictions with large-scale wildfire mitigation goals, practices that reduce emissions and/or increase carbon sequestration can simultaneously offset fuel reduction emissions. Our analysis highlights the complexities inherent in LUCC planning, underscoring the need for governments to begin the task now.