LANDMARC 2020

eLEAF is a member of a highly interdisciplinary global consortium from Europe, Asia, and the Americas in a 4-year EU-funded project called LANDMARC (Land Use Based Mitigation for Resilient Climate Pathways). LABDMARC consortium consists of members from over 10 countries with expertise in ecology, engineering, climate science, global carbon cycle, soil sciences, satellite Earth observation sciences, agronomy, economics, social science, science-technology policy research, and business. The project aims to better understand the potential of land-based mitigation technologies (LMTs) as net sinks for greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions and their associated co-benefits by applying a unique mixed-methods approach that includes: 

• a combination of remote sensing (satellite-based) and in-situ monitoring tools; 
• a set of models combining climate, land use, carbon cycle, ecosystem, and socio-economic systems; 
• iterative and continuous stakeholder engagement to better understand LMTs management practices and barriers to scaling; and 

• a comprehensive assessment of quantifiable and non-quantifiable environmental, and socio-economic risks, trade-offs and co-benefits. 

In LANDMARC, we will specifically apply a bottom-up method for actual LMTs currently applied across 6 LMT categories including (1) agriculture and agroforestry; (2) afforestation and reforestation; (3) soils and forest management; (4) Wetlands (e.g. peatlands); (5) biogenic land-based wastes/management and; (6) bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). The LMT categories will be studied in 16* country case studies with the potential to scale up regionally in 5 key continents: 

1. Europe: The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain 

1. Asia: Vietnam, Nepal, Indonesia 

1. Africa: Kenya, Uganda, Burkina Faso, South Africa 

1. Latin America: Colombia, Venezuela 

1. North America: Canada 

*Ukraine case study has been added recently to the project to make the total number 17 case studies. 

The LANDMARC concept is based on three building blocks (Figure 1). The first building block aims to evaluate the feasibility of LMT applications with local and regional stakeholders across the 5 continents for LMT implementation and scaling up. The second building block supports the feasibility assessment of carbon sequestration potential and potential to mitigate emissions of soil N2O and CH4 (in selected case studies) through Earth observations (EO) including both remote sensing and in-situ monitoring of soils and vegetation as well as the atmosphere. The third and last building block focuses on the quantification and estimation of the various impacts of large scale LMT implementations through a set of regional and global models including DayCent, ALCES, LandSHIFT, E3ME, EC-Earth3 and CIMP6. 

eLEAF is leading the case studies in Burkina Faso and South Africa and contributing with data and analyses in the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and other case studies. eLEAF with its expertise in using remote sensing to estimate biomass production and carbon uptake by vegetation at different scales and timeframes, will play a major role in the WP3 of the project that focuses on developing accurate and cost-effective monitoring to estimate the potential of LMTs as net carbon sinks. Furthermore, eLEAF will use Eddy Covariance data to calibrate and validate its own ETLook model at different case studies in the project.