The global climate change is a worldwide problem where its mitigation is one of the 17th Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. An effective mitigation strategy should assess all the possible sustainable actions that can contribute to this direction. A challenging and very prominent contribution to raise CO2 sequestration could come from the Land Use Land Use Change and Forestry sector (LULUCF sector) and the utilization of Marginal Lands (MLs) that today are widely available in the EU. MLs can play significant role as potential Carbon Sinks. Even though MLs’ contribution is acknowledged the influence of their active inclusion in the climate change mitigation strategies has not yet been estimated in depth.
MAIL focuses on m/sm MLs in order to classify them into Carbon sequestration capacity categories based on innovative approaches fully consistent with the IPCC methods and the UNFCCC requirements. The final goal is to deliver a methodology and application set in a web-based platform format, which will be valuable for policy makers, stakeholders, or researchers.
MAIL, will facilitate the appropriate exchange of experts with cumulative experience between academic and business sector, while disciplines of forestry and remote sensing will be combined for an efficient project goals implementation.
The usage of MLs as potential Carbon Sinks will contribute to the CO2 removals and enhance the agroforestry’s impact rate in the reduction of GHG. MLs could offer suitable sites to implement afforestation/reforestation projects and therefore new potential carbon sinks without being competitive with sustainable food production from agricultural lands. To that end MLs’ location, spatial distribution and suitability must be assessed in an efficient way, where thematic maps will be produced for policy makers, stakeholders and research community. MLs located in wider agricultural lands that could be characterized as fallow lands are out of MAIL’s scope, due to the possible response of farmers to new cultivation opportunities or techniques and the complex socioeconomic reasons, which in the case of m/sm areas are considered limited.
So far RS image analysis algorithms that have been developed in either commercial or open source platforms, using mostly multispectral but also panchromatic and radar images, have helped the management of vegetated land (cultivated or forested). Our purpose is to use the techniques of identification and monitoring of the MLs for their appropriate management to implement the two major actions: a) Decrease overall CO2 emissions, and b) Increase the CO2 sequestration at m/sm MLs. As a result, MAIL will contribute to the adaptation – mitigation of global warming and climate change.
The main MAIL objective is to trigger the utilization of MLs as potential Carbon Sinks, to increase sequestration of CO2 in the LULUCF sector without any impact on agri-food sector. More specifically MAIL has the following objectives:
Definition of parameters describing Marginal Land within the different European climate zones, as MLs are affected by latitude; Selection of proper base maps, considering Global, EU and regional datasets; Implementation of certain series of data processing to determine the best possible way to map/monitor m/sm MLs based on free available datasets, satellite data or open source applications; Quantification of potential CO2 sequestration capacity and sustainable utilization of MLs under the prism of LULUCF; Alternative proposals of possible vegetation species that might be used for CO2 storage on MLs considering the limited site conditions; Creation of a knowledge base and a virtual web classroom for the training of participants in advanced classification remote sensing techniques; Establishment of a permanent working team consisting of RS and Forestry experts that will focus on the MLs management at EU level.
