Johanna Braun

My research aims to assess trade-offs and synergies between climate change mitigation, food security and biodiversity conservation based on scenario simulations with the dynamic global vegetation model LPJmL. In this, I focus on potentials and side-effects of land-based negative emission technologies and practices, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), reforestation and pyrogenic carbon capture and storage (PyCCS). Besides that, I am interested in the potentials of dietary changes as one option to reduce anthropogenic pressures on land and water resources.

To assess the impacts of different land use scenarios on key biogeochemical earth system processes and to explore options within the “safe operating space”, I use the concept of planetary boundaries in close collaboration with my colleagues in the TESS group (Terrestrial Safe Operating Space). This framework allows to identify and assess future scenarios of (more) sustainable land use which contribute to climate change mitigation while respecting other planetary boundaries connected to biosphere integrity, land-system change, water- and nutrient-cycles.