Assessment of the Contribution of Native-, African-, and Brown American Dryland Agriculture to US Carbon Dynamics

Abstract:

In Chapter 7: Tribal Lands of the Second State of Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2) from the U.S. Global Change Research Program (https://carbon2018.globalchange.gov/) a Key finding stated that: “... scientific data and peer-reviewed publications pertaining to carbon stocks and fluxes on indigenous (native) lands in North America are virtually nonexistent .....” (https://carbon2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/7/). We tested this finding and found a number of datasets and peer-reviewed publications that have implicitly provided these estimates for Tribal lands and explicitly for all cropland and rangelands in North America including Tribal land. For example, the MODIS 1-km gross and net primary production (GPP & NPP, respectively) datasets are available from 2000 - 2017. As recently as 2019 a study in the Journal Ecological Applications compared 30-m pixel resolution Landsat 5 to 8 derived estimates of NPP for three different land ownerships in rangelands including Tribal, Private, and Public Lands for the period 1993 - 2016. We reinterpreted this study’s findings and showed comparable ecoregion-level NPP for Tribal and Private lands, though both had greater NPP than Public Lands. Additionally, the US Census of 2007 indicated that the number of black farmers/ranchers were approximately 31,000 out of greater than 3 million farmers/ranchers in the USA. The USDA National Agriculture Statistics Services (NASS) provides maps of the spatial distribution of black owned farms and ranches, but an assessment of the relative contribution of black and brown owned ranches to overall production in forage and grazing livestock production has not been made. Consequently, in support of the Resource Planning Act of 1974 we provide to the USDA USFS the methods for how these estimates of NPP on Native, Black, and Brown American rangelands may be made as well as estimates of the relative contribution to NPP of these pastoralists.