Environmental modelling and monitoring data of land and freshwater ecosystems as part of NC-International Project 2C: Net Zero Plus trade-offs and co-benefits in Sub-Saharan Africa

NC-International: NERC-funded programme delivering international science for net zero plus as part of national capability.
Around the globe, progress towards Net Zero and adaptation to climate change is underpinned by our understanding of the linkages between land and water systems. The NC-International programme aims to answer the following thematic science questions:
1. What changes in climate, pollution, and land management limit the land's ability to absorb more carbon now and in the future?
2. What are the trade-offs and co-benefits of net-zero land-based mitigation options on food production, biodiversity, and soil, water, and air quality?
3. How can we adapt to climate change and become more resilient to natural hazards like floods, droughts, fires, and extreme weather?
NC-International comprises nine, individual but interlinked, projects, nested within the three thematic areas above and across either global, southeast Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. Project 2C, "Net Zero Plus Trade-offs and Co-benefits in Sub-Saharan Africa", addresses the second theme, with a focus on Lake Victoria in sub-Saharan Africa.
This data collection represents a suite of geospatial (raster and polygon) datasets that describe land degradation processes (soil erosion and nutrient fluxes from land to water) and provision of ecosystem services (nutrient and soil retention, runoff and baseflow regulation, and terrestrial carbon storage) in Lake Victoria's catchment area. These were produced at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology using spatially explicit empirical models including the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) and the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services & Trade-offs (InVEST) platform.