Urban Greening Could Help Achieve Carbon Neutrality Goals – GWC Mag

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems

Urban vegetation, while subjected to distinctive environmental conditions including urban heat island effects, elevated CO₂ concentration, and intensive landscaping practices, plays a pivotal role in the carbon dynamics of cities. However, estimating the net CO₂ exchange over urban vegetated terrains remains a complex challenge. This further complicates the accurate assessment of the environmental benefits associated with urban greening, a widely commended nature-based solution in cities’ climate action plans.

Li et al. [2023] introduce the WRF-UBC modeling framework, which is designed to quantify biogenic CO₂ exchange over urban vegetation considering both meteorological and anthropogenic perturbations. They implemented the model on the Chicago Metropolitan Area considering urban hydroclimate dynamics and plant phenology. They found that urban vegetation has the potential to offset more than half of the on-road emissions in the region during typical summer months. Intriguingly, the study also revealed that irrigation practices, aside from ameliorating urban heat, can enhance CO₂ sequestration.

Delving deeper, the research showed the competing mechanisms influencing CO₂ flux, emphasizing the importance of location-aware strategies when implementing nature-based solutions to mitigate the impact of climate change and meet carbon neutrality goals.

The study offers significant insights into urban carbon accounting, decarbonization strategy, and optimization of urban landscaping practices. It lays a foundation for future studies into urban biogenic carbon dynamics, encompassing its generation, distribution, and sequestration, thereby enhancing the understanding and approach to carbon reduction and urban-centric nature-based solutions.

Citation: Li, P., Sharma, A., Wang, Z.-H., & Wuebbles, D. (2023). Assessing impacts of environmental perturbations on urban biogenic carbon exchange in the Chicago region. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 15, e2023MS003867. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023MS003867

—Jiwen Fan, Editor, JAMES

Text © 2023. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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