Managing for climate and production goals on crop-lands

作者：Shelby C. McClelland, Déborah Bossio, Doria R. Gordon, Johannes Lehmann, Matthew Hayek, Stephen M. Ogle, Jonathan Sanderman, Stephen A. Wood, Yi Yang, Dominic Woolf · 发表于：Nature Climate Change · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1038/s41558-025-02337-7 · 被引用次数：21 · 研究领域：Climate change impacts on agriculture、Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics、Crop Yield and Soil Fertility

The assumption that crop-land natural climate solutions (NCS) have benefits for both climate change mitigation and crop production remains largely untested. Here we model GHG emissions and crop yields from crop-land NCS through the end of the century. We find that favourable (win–win) outcomes were the exception not the norm; grass cover crops with no tillage lead to cumulative global GHG mitigation of 32.6 Pg CO2 equivalent, 95% confidence interval (29.5, 35.7), by 2050 but reduce cumulative crop yields by 4.8 Pg, 95% confidence interval (4.0, 5.7). Legume cover crops with no tillage result in favourable outcomes through 2050 but increase GHG emissions for some regions by 2100. Crop-lands with low soil nitrogen and high clay are more likely to have favourable outcomes. Avoiding crop losses, we find modest GHG mitigation benefits from crop-land NCS, 4.4 Pg CO2 equivalent, 95% confidence interval (4.2, 4.6) by 2050, indicating crop-land soil will constitute a fraction of food system decarbonization. Climate mitigation through natural climate solutions in crop-lands may be a way to reconcile climate goals with food security. However, here the authors show that some natural climate solution practices tend to lower yields and that maintaining yields lowers the potential GHG mitigation.