A special open access issue of the Ecological Society of America's Frontiers in Ecology on 'Biogenic greenhouse gases in North American terrestrial ecosystems' was released. It incorporates 8 papers first prepared as technical input to the 2013 National Climate Assessment (NCA), with support from the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program, Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group (CCIWG) member agencies and others. These studies found that approximately 35% of fossil-fuel-derived CO2 emissions in North America are currently absorbed by terrestrial ecosystems. Biogenic CH4 and N2O emissions offset at least half of the terrestrial CO2 uptake. Opportunities to reverse these trends, such as changing agricultural and forestry management practices to those that promote C sequestration and improved nitrogen fertilizer management and application technologies with ecological co-benefits, reduced agricultural input costs and increased crop yields exist. Full accounting of related costs and benefits can show that such improved management of agricultural and forest ecosystems can economically mitigate atmospheric GHG concentrations in the next decades.

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