Landscape carbon accumulation through reductions in emissions (L-CARE): developing brownfield management protocols for carbon sequestration and habitat use

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Brownfield management represents an important opportunity for carbon (C) sequestration and storage to help**meet industrial climate change mitigation targets. C is four times more plentiful in the terrestrial biosphere than**in the atmosphere, but conventional ecosystem management for climate change mitigation can be controversial.**The OBJECTIVE of this research program is to quantify how massive sulfur and metal emissions reductions in**Ontario's largest mining and smelting centre, coupled with novel ecosystem reclamation practices, lead to C**sequestration and influence the underlying processes of primary production, mineralization, and C and energy**transfer through ecosystems. This research program will facilitate important economic and environmental**opportunities for our partners, Vale and Sudbury-INO (Glencore). Our preliminary estimate of 30y C storage**potential in managed Sudbury uplands relative to un-reclaimed lands is 5Mt representing ~$500 million.**However a unique and important focus of our study relative to other C sequestration initiatives is on**watershed linkages between C pools, recognizing that C is not static, but continuously exchanging between**uplands, wetlands and lakes (the landscape receptors) and the atmosphere. We will focus on upland, wetland,**and lake systems and their linkages and the data will feed to a scaling and integration team, who will use**remote sensing approaches and integrative accounting approaches to scale up trial plots to landscape scales to**project future C sequestration potentials. This work will also serve as an important set of case studies to guide**industrial management of brownfield environments for C sequestration elsewhere in Ontario and Canada.**The research program will provide an excellent training environment for both applied and fundamental**aspects of C and GHG cycling and management across complex industrial landscapes, facilitating HQP**interactions with industry and government partners and with co-applicants and partners across 8 universities, 2**partner and 2 collaborator companies, 3 government agencies and by using multidisciplinary approaches**spanning from the gene-to-field-to-landscape (modelling) scales.