Jan 2020 FCWG Learning Exchange Series Natural Climate Solutions

alright well let's go ahead and get started good afternoon everyone we are so pleased to welcome you to our fourth session of the 2019 2020 learning exchange series I'm Todd antal with the northern Institute of Applied climate science and the u.s. Forest Service and I'm sitting in for our regular host for this webinar series Lauren Cooper who is out this afternoon the forest climate working group is diverse group of force interests including landowners industry conservationists academia and those active with carbon markets the group has worked together for almost 10 years to advocate first aitt and federal policies that work to ensure sustainable forest use and Prevention of land-use change we've currently been in the process of reinvigorating our focus and activities and welcome in queer inquiries into our work please reach out if you have questions or think your organization may be interested in joining so for today's speaker I'd like to introduce Joe Farr gionee who is the science director for the North American region for the Nature Conservancy today's session will focus on natural climate solutions and some recent work exploring the magnitude of different natural climate solutions at the state level ok we're very excited to begin today but before we do I'd like to briefly share few details to automatically receive registration details and information regarding upcoming webinars please email us at forest see at msu edu to join our mailing list attendees today are also qualified to receive one CFE credit from SAF if you are interested in this credit please reach out to us at that same email address for CE at MSU edu our session today is being recorded and will be posted on the web along with any supplemental resources such as the presentation slides these will go up in the next or so if you're registered you'll receive an email letting you know where and when to find that our session today is also going to be followed up with the Q&A session so in our zoom interface you'll see the word chat with little drop-down triangle next to it here you can offer up questions at any point during the presentation we'll compile these and then present questions to Joe in the Q&A session time permitting if you're calling in on the phone but you can send an email you can send your questions directly to you guessed it forest carbon or forest see at MSU edu and in case of any questions that we don't get to we will work with Joe to have these addressed and put them together into document which will be shared along with the presentation materials okay so with that Joe will you please share your screen and begin today's presentation yes thanks everyone for joining Todd can you hear me yes great loud and clear all right would like to talk to you today about technologies that can help solve climate change shown here are two of my favorite solar panels and electric cars but imagine with me if you will cost-effective technology that could take carbon out of the atmosphere and turn it into diversity of useful products and of course we have that so it's the plant cell and may be preaching to the choir here on the forest carbon working group but as I'm talking to giving public talks always like to remind people that plants are made of carbon in fact life on Earth as you may recall from your high school biology class or Star Trek our carbon-based so plants are about 50% carbon and what many people don't know is that there's almost four times more carbon in soils than there is in the atmosphere and know we're talking specifically about forests and trees today and and that is where most of the plant biomass is but do have to give shout out to grasslands where roughly 80% of the biomass is below ground that there is fair amount of carbon in grasslands as well both in that bloger ground biomass and in the soil and the way we've defined natural climate solutions to include both natural and working lands we also talked about methane and nitrous oxide which are potent greenhouse gases so we know that that nature is made up of carbon and there's an estimate that you know there's roughly two and half trillion fewer trees now than there was pre human civilization so getting some of that back through reforestation protecting what's there rebuilding the soils in our agricultural and and working lands how much can that really add up to helping solve the climate change crisis and so what I'd like to talk to you today the rest of the presentation will be in trying to answer this question globally and in the United States and then diving in to talk little bit about some specific opportunities with regards to forests and trees in the US so starting with how much can nature contribute globally there was this paper in the Proceedings of National National Academy of Sciences in 2017 with led by Bronte and Griscom and myself and bunch of colleagues and it it defined natural climate solutions to look at three types of actions of protection restoration and improved management and we looked at these categories across four different biomes of forests grasslands wetlands and agriculture and we impose some constraints so he said we could reforest all of the world's cropland but then we wouldn't have food to eat so that's probably not very useful scenario so so what can we do given the constraints of meeting demands for food and fiber and then work for the Nature Conservancy which is biodiversity conservation organization so of course we have no harm to biodiversity constraint and the biggest place where that comes into play is we were careful not to propose reforesting grasslands because as much as we all love forest you know there are lots of critters and some people that are pretty attached to grasslands so we don't want to reforest grasslands even if it's climatically possible and so just cutting right to the the chase if you fall asleep for the rest of the talk the kind of headline number said there's 400 billion or sorry for 24 billion tons per year potential maximum potential from natural climate solutions and this was looking across forests grasslands and AG lands and wetlands and you can see that the bulk of that is in forests and in particular reforestation and avoided forest conversion globally are really big opportunities natural forest management is also big opportunity and they're also much more uncertain as to what the potential is there because it depends so much on sort of what current practices are for management etc and so this is this is helpful as sort of upper bound maximum potential but common question is well how much of this could we achieve especially you know how much is feasible and one way to think about that is at different price points so there's this concept of marginal abatement costs which is if there were price on carbon say at ten dollars tonne or $50 ton $100 ton how how much we incentivize at each price find how much mitigation would you get so obviously things that are relatively inexpensive if you pay $10 ton then you get all those but things that are more expensive you might require higher price and this could be we don't specify the mechanism so this is it's price so if you had cap-and-trade system or other other mechanism that was paying for this that you know that that's price if you're landowner and you're reforesting that's revenue right because you're being paid for that benefit you're providing so estimating the marginal abatement costs of these different practices we find that men much of the potential is available at relatively affordable prices so so at $100 per ton you get we get 11 billion ton potential and this is an annual potential $10 per ton you get four billion tons of carbon dioxide per year kept out of the atmosphere of both avoided admissions and an increased sequestration and so one of the one of the things always like to point out is that natural climate solutions have many code benefits and so that previous slide looking at cost is assuming you're just paying for the carbon but it's really important to point out that if you were to do that you would have significant additional benefits with regards to air quality soil health and fertility biodiversity habitat and water both providing clean drinking water and helping to regulate floods and store floodwaters and so at $10 per ton you we get those four billion you get those four billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year but you would also get many other benefits and this is important because it's that price may be misleading there are things that are expensive if you only consider the carbon but that that society regularly invests in and that's typically because of these Co benefits so urban forestry for example when you look across natural climate solutions is relatively expensive but when you look at the kinds of things that people are willing to pay for urban forestry often rises up there as one of things people are going to pay for because they're it's quality of life benefit they're not paying for the carbon per se they're paying for those co benefits so to emphasize that natural climate solutions have strong co-benefits we we weren't able to quantify the magnitude of the benefit that you would get for each of these things because it's which would be really challenging but we did identify kind of presence/absence of whether particular natural climate solution contributes to co benefits with regards to air biodiversity soil and water and the take-home message here is that most of the natural climate solutions provide most of those co benefits so we talked about billions and tons and that sounds good but it you know put that in context what does that mean is that significant would it help actually solve the climate crisis and meet the ambitious climate targets that have been set and so one way to look at this is the business-as-usual trajectory of emissions going up as shown as black line and you can see the slides little old since we're now in 2020 but think the point remains and the Green Line shows what pathway for keeping the temperature warming less both less than two degrees Celsius and so that gap between the black line and the Green Line shows the amount of mitigation that would be required and what we see is that natural climate solutions if it's scaled up to its maximum potential at $100 per ton marginal abatement cost that it's scaled up by 2025 to that potential it would give mitigation equivalent to the Green Line shown here and then in order to stay on that less than 2 degrees warming you would need an additional mitigation from as shown here in the gray and so when you put it all together natural climate solutions could contribute 37% of the solution needed between now and 2030 so roughly third of that solution you know in the near the next decade so one of the reasons that we think natural climate solutions are so promising and essential is because they're they're available now and one of it when we're communicating about these to the public it's very important to emphasize that this is not an instead of solution like we can do not requirement solutions and not worry about rapidly transitioning our energy systems away from fossil fuels in fact we need both and the latest science shows that simply rapid transitioning our our energy systems off of fossil fuels will likely not be adequate to meet the ambitious climate targets of the Paris agreement and in fact we will need carbon dioxide removal technologies and while people are working to develop other carbon dioxide removal technologies right now the most cost-effective of those are natural climate solutions so to summarize the global results at that hundred dollars per ton of co2 price point there be 11 billion in tons of carbon dioxide per year of mitigation and that's that's roughly third of the mitigation that we would need between now and 2030 and it's roughly equivalent to stopping all emissions from oil that's about third of our of our emissions so think to the answer to the question of you this potentially significant is it worth talking about as reason to invest more in protecting nature restoring forests think it is think it is potentially significant think it's likely necessary to help us meet our climate targets and we always need to emphasize in our communication that this is additional to the change that we need to see in me the energy sector and in our residential home heating and another other and and concrete it's in addition to all those other things that we need to do but that's think that's don't think it's distracting think it's essential because we're going to need this additional carbon dioxide removal so that was great to have kind of high-level global perspective and understanding that this is potentially globally significant but of course we it's that global action is difficult and the action takes place you know in nations and States and so better understanding of what the central furniture climate solutions is at the state level seemed at the at the country level and the state almost seemed really important so are one of our next steps was to do this where it can publish his paper on natural climate solutions for the United States and jumping right into the results we found maximum potential of 1.2 billion tons carbon dioxide per year and again the the bulk of that comes from forests and so we we looked at reforestation natural forest management avoided for his conversion urban reforestation fire management and some improved plantations extended rotations and plantations you and again these different price points so we looked at at $10 $50 $100 per ton of carbon you see you get the majority of that mitigation potential 90% at the hundred dollar price point and 75% of it point nine billion tons at $50 per ton and 300 million tons at just $10 per ton so those we picked those price points to you know $10 is roughly the current price on voluntary markets and and the existing regulatory markets are in that in that order of magnitude but it's 300 million tons per year just in u.s. $50.00 is the Obama administration's ask kind of median estimate for the social cost of carbon which is highly dependent on what assumptions you make and therefore debatable but and on that order of magnitude is are pretty common for social cost of carbon estimates and $100 per ton is what some economists have estimated would be necessary to keep us on track for that Paris agreement so so that's how he came up with those numbers but to give sense of that of the potential magnitude and again there are really strong co-benefits of natural climate solutions across air biodiversity soil and water so 1.2 billion tonnes sounds like lot what is that in context so from the the national carbon inventory the net emissions in 2016 that considers both the emissions and the current land sink we argue that this 1.2 billion tonnes would be could be achieved additional to the current land think so it's it's actions that would be taken that would increase that so that ends up being 21 percent of current of our net emissions our recent most recent net emissions and that's equivalent to the pollution from all the cars and light-duty trucks in the US so potentially significant amount of mitigation for the u.s. think this was somewhat surprising to people because you know when we think about globally where where natural climate solutions can make big impact we often think about tropical countries that have high rates of deforestation and perhaps are less developed and have relatively low per capita emissions as some place where whole nation could offset significant portion of its or mitigate significant portion of its emissions through natural climate solutions but we find that even in the US where our per capita emissions are quite high that that investing in natural climate solutions is is significant and could make significant difference so for bunch of the pathways that we looked at in the natural climate solutions for the US paper we were able to break down those estimates to the state level and so if you go to the website nature for climate org there's drop-down for tools one of the tools is the u.s. state mapper and then don't know if you can see my cursor but if you you can toggle between the national view and the state view and if you click on the state button then you can pick state and it tells you the our estimate for area and mitigation potential for any state that you click on and then if you want to change them you can look at the maximum or any different price point if you click on this little lock thing when you when you change one all of these change so you switch from max to $100 it switches to all of them so that's that's an existing tool it's has its the numbers in it are consistent with what's published in that paper in twin that 2018 paper and we've done some I'll say little bit more about these individual pathways but we've also done some follow-up work since then it's not yet published and want to also share some of that with you now so we'll talk about how much can nature contribute via forest opportunities and this is specific to the to the US so from the natural climate solutions for the u.s. paper we the reforestation estimate was based on GIS analysis it identified 156 million acres that could be reforested that was pretty inclusive it basically said that it used to be forest is it for us now and it's not city or road then it's potentially to reforest of all so that was you know that costs pretty broad net so for example golf course or road right away so those would show up as places that oftentimes those will show up as places that used to be forested that aren't currently in our city or road today would those would be included and so obviously there was need to refine this little bit and understand well which of these places are actually you know more likely to be reforested and so we broke out looking that broad analysis of places that could be reforested that used to be forests aren't now aren't city or road we said well which which of those are agricultural lands with challenging soils so marginal claim which of those are urban open space parks roadsides they could have additional tree cover which are places that have burned that maybe haven't recovered that might be in need of restocking which are places that are frequently flooded that might be unsuitable for development or or challenging for agriculture because they keep getting funded that could go back into the forest and similarly if you were to just say well let's put 30 meter riparian buffer everywhere you know what would that get you in terms of places that used to be forests that aren't currently and then biodiversity corridors so we had some some analyses for our conservation work that identified places that are relatively intact and important for species migration in response to climate change and so we so we identified this subset of reforestation that met each of these different criteria and this was based on conversations with people that have been involved in reforestation projects and one of things that we found is often they're associated with providing you know other benefits specifically around water so lot of work on floodplains and places that hoping to restore that floodplain might help store slow and store flood waters and have flooding benefits or water quality benefits other work was associated with water funds and riparian buffers and and water quality protection so so these seem to like places based on our experience with large-scale reforestation projects that historically have been targeted and therefore our promising for future reforestation work and so this is just one example but since you know Todd's in Michigan we have the the the total reforestation number here potential and then you can see these different subsets and they're not mutually exclusive right so the flood you know the frequently flooded ones and the riparian buffers are probably lot of lot of the same lands might show up in both but but we can slice and dice this to look at different subsets and we have also done this broken this out by ownership using the protected area database for the u.s. so we will have information on which of this is on federal state private lands or you know other local regional governments so you can see here on the left the reforestation opportunities that align with identify the places we identified as corridors for biodiversity different land uses so some of places that are cultivated crops that were considered marginal and based on this analysis or or passion and hay and then and floodplains and one of the things that you know often when we're talking to people about before is saying you know agriculture groups are rightly concerned about maintaining farmland not taking too much land out of farmland and so we focus on the marginal lands but will point out when it comes to pasture that think Sylva pasture is really underappreciated opportunity in the u.s. that even in our temperate systems cattle tend to grow better with some shade and so there can be productivity benefits from to the rancher and there can be revenue from the tree if there are if you plant trees that have the produced crops or eventually you know are used in timber so so that's something that we did not it's cultural it's not cultural common practice for ranchers in the US but you know potentially it could be and think this increasing appreciation of the value of trees on the landscape from carbon standpoint could help contribute you know some cultural change there to think more about how we can incorporate more trees in our agricultural systems so wanted to show few you know ground truth kind of photos from the analysis so here it was pasture in Florida that was identified so you could imagine so the pasture or reforestation opportunity and then the National Land cover dataset has land cover that they called developed open space which always thought was the worst sort of oxymoronic category name but but you can see what it's it's open space kind of integrate within developed areas and so you can see places that show up as developed open space and it's so this is an interesting thing to think about right like you might say well are they really going to reforest you know this lawn in the suburbs and you know you could dismiss that out of hand or you could say well do we have you know maybe developers aren't appropriately incentivize for having more trees but people seem to like trees so why you know why is that out of the question don't know the answer that but it's interesting to think about from from policy standpoint about whether we could have lot more trees and some of our instead of lawn in some places and then here's some more you know conventional things that you might think of as reforestation opportunities where there's been an abandoned field or something that is or perhaps an old clear-cut that hasn't come back the way yeah to fully to forest there could be reforestation opportunity so just some next steps on that work there's peer-reviewed publication in preparation it'll have national and regional analyses with some state-level information in the supplementary material and they'll look at the area and the amount of carbon you could get and also the costs for reforestation and some more qualitative feasibility assessment based on some stakeholder input and economics and then to try to make this available to people we plan to launch web map we're in March that would allow people to visualize and get information about where the opportunities are in their state and state level toolkit that will have the shapefiles so that GIS layers yes they're all mostly roll master so that the GIS layers for for people to analyze and some some tools that people could use for for common analyses that we expect so another place to where there's been some additional work was an urban reforestation so in the natural climate solutions for the US paper there was we estimated 8 million acres of potential for increased recover in cities and this was based on you know really solid analysis but it was done on 27 cities and then we took the average potential increase and extrapolated it to the US so on average think it's probably pretty close to right but in any particular city it's just not that helpful because you're you know applying an average from 27 other cities so so there's clearly need for some more work here and so my colleague Rob McDonald has led an effort to do forest cover for all cities using 2 meter NAIP imagery so has hundred largest cities and each city included multiple municipalities and so the guess it's the metropolitan areas hundred largest Metroplex areas and then it included in all of the municipalities within that metropolitan area so it ends up being pretty big basically although all the cities in the US and he did an equity analysis and don't want to spoil the takeaway but it turns out that there is an equity gap in terms of tree cover so so that's an interesting thing to think about that not only if we're investing in urban reforestation it has carbon benefits it has air quality benefits it has benefits for reducing heat waves and and the phoner with vulnerable people that may be at risk from from heat waves it reduces the energy consumption for air conditioning and so has that additional climate benefit but we also could be done in way that could it could reduce some disparities in between rich and poor neighborhoods so that we're having more equity for our tree cover and so this is also in preparation for submission for peer review so one of the other pathways or opportunities that we looked at in the natural climate solutions for the u.s. paper was forest loss or avoid forest conversion and this work was done in collaboration with Chris Williams Clark University and he has subsequently we used relatively crude albedo adjustment in this work and he's subsequently conducted much more sophisticated albedo correction so if for folks that aren't familiar with this issue its it's biggest challenge in places where in there is you have evergreen forests and snow cover because if the forest is lost lost you end up with highly reflective snow for much of the year and that has that can actually be relatively cooling obviously to have that more reflective snow than to have dark tree canopy and so that can offset much of the benefit that you get from from protecting those forests or from reforesting so so that can help us target our efforts on for avoided deforestation to the places where it would have the largest climate benefit so that's also work that is soon to be submitted for publication and then finally one of the the areas that we the opportunities we looked at from natural climate solutions for the u.s. paper was on fire management and this was focused on the western US and it just looked at the area that's shown here with these different colors so these different forest types and it made some assumptions about if you were to do treatments like prescribed burning that prevented high severity fire and you look out 20 years do you regain that carbon that was emitted in the prescribed fire by having avoiding high severity fires because what happens in high severity fire what can happen is relatively scorched earth situation where you don't have very much photo since this happening for long time and so if you can avoid that kind of that scorched earth scenario you maintain the capacity of the landscape to continue to sequester carbon and that ends up having strong net benefit even though there may be emissions upfront associated with reducing fuel load and so one of the so feel pretty good about the work that we did here but some of those estimates for how how much emissions can be reduce think there's lot more work that could be done to target this to places that are at high risk of high severity fire and to refine those estimates of the benefits of avoiding high severity fire and that's not something that we have soon to be published that's think that's that's just hope for an area for future work will also point out that one of the biggest opportunities is related to improve forest management and that is not something that we currently have good estimates for at the state level the easiest thing to measure is the benefit of extending rotations because that is that's the easiest thing to quantify and so that's lot of the work looking at changes in forest management practices have been around fixed well in the forest industry that is not the first thing that they are thinking about because they feel like they have the economic optimum pretty well figured out for their rotations but other things like under stalking competing vegetation staying from below these may you know various forms of timber stand improvement these may help increase the growth of merchantable timber and increase the amount of carbon that's being stored on the landscape and therefore be win-win from standpoint of forest management and so those are all practices that that think there's additional work to be done to understand their relative potential benefit yeah in different states and so one area of interest is the FIA data identify stands that have competing vegetation and that and that could be used to help estimate the potential impact of that competing vegetation on the amount of carbon there and therefore the potential to have treatments that that move them to more fully stocked situation and an increased carbon storage so that's so these are all areas where think there's additional need for you know ongoing work to better understand our our opportunities and take it down to the resolution where decision-makers in different states can can really take advantage of it so with that hope I've left plenty of time for questions and given people lot of food for thought great thank you Joe yes you've left good amount of time for questions and we've we've got some questions that have been rolling in so please attendees please continue posting your questions into the chat box and and we will be giving giving Joe an opportunity to address those Joe I'll have you just leave your presentation up during this Q&A session in case you want to kind of toggle through things so I'll kind of start things off just you know recognizing you did great job Joe with with addressing some of the questions that were work we're coming in as you went through your presentation I'm curious if you could talk little bit about kind of what is behind the those estimates of climate mitigation in terms of just in it sort of in general sense because you know we we sort of recognize that as climate changes as as precipitation patterns change and the temperatures warm that the carbon cycling carbon flux processes are also stand to be altered from from those changes as well so can you just sort of briefly talk about whether or not climate projections were sort of considered in those estimates or if that's something that's if not if that's something that's going to be maybe addressed in in future work yeah that's something that may be addressed in future work so the thinking that we had was that we were most interested in the Delta between what business as usual and what an intervention would be and so we weren't trying to estimate you know the whole us carbon inventory under each scenario we were just interested in understanding that Delta and so you know think in in so many of our pathways are maybe somewhat robust you know so if you plant trees you'll get you know we have reasonable degree of certainty around the growth rate we would get over the next couple decades regardless of the the climate scenario and and think some of the challenges are you know protecting forests that if they burn wouldn't regenerate you know maybe that isn't those aren't the place the best places to invest as some places are becoming so dry that establishment is unlikely so you know think there is some refinement that that could be done to better understand how climate change is likely to make you know essentially undermined some of our potential investments great thank you let's see had question cued up here and we've got so many questions rolling in here that lost it okay here it is so Gerard asked question that that was sort of thinking about as well and he asked given the difficulty of operating carbon markets could we rely on the water bill to increase reforestation in other words are city dwellers willing to pay for the hydrologic services of the forest in their watershed and this is this is sorta something that was on my mind as you were as you were showing the the different marginal abatement costs and the co benefits of just whether or not some of those other co benefits could could provide some of the help with the financial aspects of these financing these projects are these pathways yeah think that there are you know the the the phrase we use is it's not there's not silver silver bullet it's probably lot of silver bb's and so to get some of these you know think different different project will require different funding streams and where water fund you know where city is willing to invest in its watershed that's great source it's not everywhere that it works it works best if there's big enough population with small enough watershed so the kind of the math works so that you know so Quito and Ecuador has big population and the and it's constrained by tall mountains and so the watershed isn't huge you know whereas if you you know the the Mississippi drains 41% of the u.s. so the you know down in Louisiana they fear one of the 20 million people that drinks Mississippi River water that's pretty big watershed to try to fix so so it depends it's going to be site-specific yeah good answer okay we've got question from Jennifer asking in your us analysis of forest carbon potential did you find much difference between deciduous or eastern and conifer evergreen conifer or Western forests well let's say so specific to reforestation we use the Smith at all Smith and burnsy you know Forest Service data on their growth curves and and growth rates and those so they have so it's for you know every forest type and region has you know forest type and specific growth rate and so it you know so the forests that are the forest types that are found on you know on wet soils are tend to be you know grow faster and so it's it's there's regional variation and variation within the region based on the forest type but it's that you know we didn't we are just pulling from that Forest Service data that makes sense did answer the question yeah think so and so the one of the other questions was about you know where can you find all the assumptions so if you didn't provide link is the easiest way is just to Google so if you google natural climate solutions the United States the first thing is to the paper it's open source and the supplemental material is 100 pages but it's broken out by pathway and so we we found that the lot of time breaking out the pathways so they were sort of non-overlapping and could be treated relatively independently so that allowed us to use the best available information for each one including with the marginal abatement costs so when we were looking at reforestation you could go to literature and look at papers that estimated the cost of that and then and what percentage was veil of reforestation projects were likely to be available at different price points similarly you know and then when you and then for avoided deforestation similarly go to that literature and estimate that so and so for and for avoid grassland conversion we used Conservation Reserve Program payments as estimate of the cost of avoiding conversion because that's program that pays people to keep laying doubt of out of production so we just so we it was different for each pathway we are trying to finalize the similar analysis for Canada so we hope that will be submitted in the next couple months great yes that question Catherine just passed that question few you saw that pop up and in the chat box so don't is there is there anything else that you you can say about that or do you want to just leave it as stay tuned work with Canada so mean don't know don't have anything else coherent say about it except that you know nature United which is the Nature Conservancy of philia and Canada helped coordinate but we had really great engagement with the folks in in provincial and federal agencies in Canada so that think it's going to be quite strong approach that that makes use of the some of the same tools that have been used for the Canadian inventory for the friend and so should be should line up pretty well with Prime Minister Trudeau's natural climate solutions three billion-dollar policy platform great we have one small maybe clarifying question somebody asked about where the $100 per ton estimate or number that was used in the marginal abatement costs where what was kind of the thinking behind is using that number mean we just semi arbitrarily picked three price points to illustrate the impact of different prices of different carbon prices and the the rationale that we used for $10 $50 and $100 is that that the hundred-dollar one is what some economists have argued would be necessary to keep warming to two degrees so that's they were looking primarily at the fossil fuel sector but but there that's that so unfortunately we don't have consistent price signal for carbon globally at this point and it's unclear how soon we'll get there but so but think the the voluntary markets and voluntary actions and state actions are quite promising both on the you know renewable portfolio standards for energy and also on natural climate solution so the u.s. Climate Alliance states which there's now 24 states plus Puerto Rico have stated that they will take action to help the u.s. meet its Paris agreement commitments regardless of whether the federal government ultimately withdraws from the agreement so so think that there's lot of opportunity for an investment whether it be specifically with price on carbon or whether it be in investments in natural climate solutions or you know efficiency standards or renewable portfolio standards that that increase transition to no energy okay we've got question from from penny about essentially about public officials being made aware of the work that you've been speaking of Anna and you know think know the answer to that but was hoping maybe you could you could just talk little bit about maybe sort of how how these analyses have been used with the US climate alliance dates and and and maybe some of your thoughts on what some of the response from planners and decision makers at the various land management agencies has been and sort of in response to to these really you know think thought-provoking estimates yeah think let's say so the u.s. Climate Alliance has had regional Learning Labs that bring together delegates from each of the state talk about opportunities in their state and so we shared this information with them and you know they're you know the states are at different different places I'm on the journey of figuring out what policies they plan to implement but think there's lot of excitement because you know in large part because there's so many co-benefits that you know people see you know there's political support for it guess you know so say there's not there's not an anti tree Lobby so it's it's often viewed as pretty win-win to invest in forests and natural and working lands and soil health so so that's encouraging you know in Minnesota their previous governor had buffer rule that mandated buffers you know those are in in between streams and and even including ditches agricultural ditches and and where the row crops were so most of that's been in perennial grasses but some of that's been reforestation so think you know there are things that can and are being done at the state level and that hope is in part inspired by the excitement that and increased awareness that this work has generated don't know that they're using our GIS layers per se but we hope what we hope to make those increasingly available great well think that that is excellent place to end as mentioned we didn't probably weren't expecting to have enough time to answer all the questions so we will compile any unanswered questions and work with Joe to get answers to those posted along with the presentation slides so just to to end things I'd like to thank Joe very much for for sharing his work with us today I'd also like to thank the members of the forest climate working group and the forest climate working group steering committee for their support and guidance in our 2019 2020 webinar season again the webinar recording and any supplemental materials will be posted within few days to be included on our mailing list and receive registration details and information regarding our upcoming webinar please email Forest at MSU edu I'd like to thank Joe once again for his time and information and hope you all have wonderful afternoon