Is the proposed climate change mitigation initiative “4 per 1000” achievable? Implications of soil carbon management in the large scale modelling

• To investigate the feasibility of the proposed climate change mitigation measure “4 per 1000” to tackle the annual increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. An annual increase of 4‰ in the global soil carbon pool (~1500 PgC) would offset the annual increase in the atmospheric carbon pool, which is currently around 4.3 PgC yr-1. More organic matter in the soil also means more turnover, which in turn can lead to higher emissions of other greenhouse gases than CO2, such as N2O
• To evaluate mitigation potentials (i.e. carbon sequestration capacity) from different cropland management alternatives (e.g. no-till, continuous crop cover) by considering emissions of N2O and CO2 and N leaching using LPJ-GUESS.
• To develop spatially explicit scenarios of cropland management that can be used as input to the EC-EARTH ESM for evaluation of pathways reaching the below 2 °C target.