OpenLAND

Creating a validated, spatially explicit integrated modelling framework to evaluate potential net zero pathways across the UK.

OpenLAND will provide decision makers with the insights urgently needed to put the UK on a path to deliver net zero emissions by 2050, while also delivering climate resilient soil health, food security, and biodiversity net-gain. We will identify spatially explicit intervention scenarios for land uses that exploit synergies between climate mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity. We will create a validated, UK-wide, spatially explicit integrated modelling framework, OpenLAND, to evaluate potential net zero pathways.

OpenLAND will quantify the implications of land interventions on soil carbon and health, biodiversity, agriculture, and flood risk, while exploring the synergies and trade-offs between interventions. To extend the capability of OpenCLIM (developed under previous UKRI funding) we will develop and validate a novel framework for the effective land use interventions upon carbon storage, particularly focusing on soil carbon and soil health evaluation. This will be achieved by ground truthing soil carbon and soil health using empirical data, and by developing and trialling robotic monitoring for measuring and verifying soil carbon and health.

This will allow data relating to soil carbon and long-term carbon storage potential to feed into OpenLAND to give real world evaluation of below-ground carbon dynamics under land-use intervention scenarios. It will also enable soil microbiome data, as a qualifier of soil health, to be reconciled with OpenCLIM’s projections for the terrestrial biosphere. The project will culminate in the identification of new, spatially explicit, intervention scenarios for land use interventions exploiting synergies and minimising trade-offs.