Identifying opportunities for nature-based solutions with geospatialized life cycle assessments and fine-scale socioecological data

Abstract As we increasingly understand the impact that land management intensification has on local and global climate, the call for nature-based solutions (NbS) in agroecosystems has expanded. Moreover, the pressing need to determine when and where NbS should be used raises challenges to socioecological data integration as we overcome spatiotemporal resolutions. Natural and working lands is an effort promoting NbS, particularly emissions reduction and carbon stock maintenance in forests. To overcome the spatiotemporal limitation, we integrated life cycle assessments (LCA), an ecological carbon stock model, and a land cover land use change model to synthesize rates of global warming potential (GWP) within a fine-scale geographic area (30 m). We scaled National Agricultural Statistic Survey land management data to National Land Cover Data cropland extents to assess GWP of cropland management over time and among management units (i.e. counties and production systems). We found that cropland extent alone was not indicative of GWP emissions; rather, rates of management intensity, such as energy and fertilizer use, are greater indicators of anthropogenic GWP. We found production processes for fuel and fertilizers contributed 51.93% of GWP, where 33.58% GWP was estimated from N 2 O emissions after fertilization, and only 13.31% GWP was due to energy consumption by field equipment. This demonstrates that upstream processes in LCA should be considered in NbS with the relative contribution of fertilization to GWP. Additionally, while land cover change had minimal GWP effect, urbanization will replace croplands and forests where NbS are implemented. Fine-scale landscape variations are essential for NbS to identify, as they accumulate within regional and global estimates. As such, this study demonstrates the capability to harness both LCA and fine-resolution imagery for applications in spatiotemporal and socioecological research towards identifying and monitoring NbS.