Study of greenhouse gas fluxes and earth system feedbacks in the Horizon Europe project GreenFeedBack

The Ambition of the presented project GreenFeedBack, is to enhance knowledge of the greenhouse gas dynamics in the ecosystems and link greenhouse gases in terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems to provide a solid basis for estimation of regional and global climate feedback processes taking human pressure on ecosystems into account. In GreenFeedBack we study the key processes controlling the lifecycle and fluxes of greenhouse gases in sensitive terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine areas of which some are hypothesized to be tipping elements in the climate system. Thus, we focus on high latitude terrestrial and freshwater systems, marine shelves and ocean areas. We use data from the ICOS stations in Europe, The SOCAT database and the GIOS, GEM and SMEAR network in Greenland and Finland as well as data from new dedicated field and laboratory studies. The enhanced knowledge will be used to improve descriptions of the GHG processes for implementation in ecosystem models and ESMs. To ensure that human activities affecting the greenhouse gas cycles will be integrated as part of the full analysis the first step in GreenFeedBack has been to identify human impact on the processes and variables relevant for driving the life cycles of the greenhouse gases in natural ecosystems.
Here we present the GreenFeedBack project, the link between the greenhouse gases in the different high latitude ecosystems, and the human pressures affecting the greenhouse gas fluxes from the natural high latitude ecosystems.