CE-LAND+ aims to comprehensively evaluate tCDR options considering biogeophysical and, in cooperation with another project, also ethical implications in an interdisciplinary integrated approach, based on the following research pillars:
1) Understand, quantify, and possibly reduce uncertainties related to interactions between future climate and tCDR. Specifically account for water and nutrient limitations and other model-structural differences, and investigate the response of tCDR measures under high-temperature, high-CO2 conditions through improved understanding of current-generation land surface–climate–CO2 feed-backs in process-based DGVMs (LPJmL, JSBACH) and an Earth system model (MPI-ESM).
2) Rigorously and spatially explicitly quantify biogeophysical side-effects of large-scale tCDR methods, focused on whether effective tCDR would aggravate water stress of human societies and ecosystems.
3) Analyse in depth impacts of both climate and land use change on biodiversity, with a focus on tradeoffs between maximising tCDR and biodiversity protection. Disentangle direct impacts of climate and land use change as well as indirect effects via climate-driven changes in vegetation structure and biome distribution, and develop different scenarios for biodiversity protection feed-back on tCDR land use allocation.
4) Qualitatively evaluate side-effects and tradeoffs among tCDR and other land use options from an environmental ethics perspective, too, for a representative set of tCDR scenarios (cooperation with University of Kiel).
