The neglected role of abandoned cropland in supporting both food security and climate change mitigation
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Despite the looming land scarcity for agriculture, cropland abandonment is widespread globally. Abandoned cropland can be reused to support food security and climate change mitigation. Here, we investigate the potentials and trade-offs of using global abandoned cropland for recultivation and restoring forests by natural regrowth, with spatially-explicit modelling and scenario analysis. We identify 101 Mha of abandoned cropland between 1992 and 2020, with a capability of concurrently delivering 29 to 363 Peta-calories yr-1 of food production potential and 290 to 1,066 MtCO2 yr-1 of net climate change mitigation potential, depending on land-use suitability and land allocation strategies. We also show that applying spatial prioritization is key to maximizing the achievable potentials of abandoned cropland and demonstrate other possible approaches to further increase these potentials. Our findings offer timely insights into the potentials of abandoned cropland and can inform sustainable land management to buttress food security and climate goals.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Artikelnummer | 6083 |
| Tidsskrift | Nature Communications |
| Vol/bind | 14 |
| Antal sider | 13 |
| ISSN | 2041-1723 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2023 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:
L.P.K. is supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore, under its NRF Returning Singaporean Scientists Scheme (NRF-RSS2019-007). Q.Z. is supported by the Strategic Hiring Scheme Fund of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (P0044791). Research contributes to the Global Land Programme’s “Agricultural Land Abandonment as a Global Land-Use Change Phenomenon” working group. We thank Mr. Ning Zhu and Ms. Hanci Liang for their help and suggestions on visualization.
Funding Information:
L.P.K. is supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore, under its NRF Returning Singaporean Scientists Scheme (NRF-RSS2019-007). Q.Z. is supported by the Strategic Hiring Scheme Fund of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (P0044791). Research contributes to the Global Land Programme’s “Agricultural Land Abandonment as a Global Land-Use Change Phenomenon” working group. We thank Mr. Ning Zhu and Ms. Hanci Liang for their help and suggestions on visualization.
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© 2023, Springer Nature Limited.
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