Lisa Dilling and Betsy Failey will be giving a plenary talk "Land use decision making as a driver of carbon sequestration at multiple scales: A Colorado case study" at the 2nd North American Carbon Program All-Investigators Meeting.

2nd North American Carbon Program All-Investigators Meeting
February 17-20, 2009
San Diego, CA
Conference Information

Land use decision making as a driver of carbon sequestration at multiple scales: A Colorado case study
by Lisa Dilling and Betsy Failey
February 20, 2009 at 9:30 am

Abstract: As society begins to address the issue of climate change, policy discussions have emerged on the role of land use as a means to sequester carbon. Land use is already a key player in the global carbon budget as humans have been altering vegetation and soils for agriculture and forestry purposes. At the heart of land use is human decision making. The land use pattern and its attendant carbon impacts are the end result of a complex set of policy, economic and cultural drivers that are channeled and expressed through individuals making decisions about land use. In order to understand the current pattern of carbon fluxes on managed land, and any future potential for land use to play a greater role in sequestering carbon, it is essential to understand the drivers of land use decision making at different scales, and their intersection with new imperatives and opportunities coming from climate mitigation goals. To this end, we have conducted a case study on land use decision making in the U.S. state of Colorado, a western state with significant portions of land managed by U.S. Federal governmental agencies in addition to privately-owned agricultural, grazing and forested lands. Our study has three significant components: 1) examining ownership patterns; 2) calculating the flux and carbon storage by land ownership category; and 3) illuminating the influences on land use decisions at different scales. Our main goal is to put together a first-order look at the types of decision makers involved in managing land, what influences their decisions, and how the potential for storage of additional carbon on land might vary according to ownership category and land vegetation type.