Citation: Abimbola, I.; Feliciano, D. Assessing the Area of Suitable Land for Climate Change Mitigation with Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis) in Scotland. Land 2022, 11, 1753. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11101753 Academic Editor: Julia Jones Received: 31 August 2022 Accepted: 30 September 2022 Published: 9 October 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). land Article Assessing the Area of Suitable Land for Climate Change Mitigation with Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis) in Scotland Ismaila Abimbola 1, * and Diana Feliciano 2 1 Department of Environmental Science, Atlantic Technological University (ATU), F91 YW50 Sligo, Ireland 2 TUIBS Finance, Performance & Marketing, Teesside University International Business School, Middlesbrough TS1 3BX, UK * Correspondence: dortman11@gmail.com; Tel.: +234-81-0374-0658 Abstract: One of the key areas in which the United Kingdom government plans to achieve net zero, reduce GHG emissions and sequester carbon is through afforestation. Afforestation will also provide ecosystem services to society. The Scottish government’s target is to increase woodland cover in Scotland to 25% by 2050. In this study, a land suitability analysis was used to investigate the likelihood of achieving this target based on the biophysically suitable and available land considering the current policy constraints for planting Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) in Scotland. The results showed that about 19% of land area in Scotland is biophysically suitable for Sitka spruce and about 13% is biophysically suitable and available based on policy constraints. Thus, there is an opportunity for the Scottish government to increase the woodland cover in Scotland to 31.5% and exceed its 25% woodland target. However, for Scotland to achieve net zero by 2045, it will require that more trees be planted on higher-quality agricultural land, different from areas where trees are currently planted. Keywords: mitigation; afforestation; Sitka spruce; land suitability; constraints 1. Introduction Several scientific studies have confirmed that the Earth is getting warmer due to climate change [1,2]. Anthropogenic activities are the major drivers of climate change, particularly fossil fuel burning activities that emit greenhouse gases (GHG) into the at- mosphere, followed by CO 2 emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry [3,4]. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, the impacts of climate change are very likely to lead to extreme weather and climate events globally, such as heavy precipitation, increase in agricultural and ecological drought, increase in permafrost melting and loss of snow cover [5]. Some of these extreme weather events are already being experienced globally. Thus, there is a need for ambitious actions to be taken to tackle climate change and reduce GHGs emissions. The current business- as-usual trajectory would lead to an increase of 4–5 ◦ C in global average temperature by 2100, which will have negative implications [6]. In the United Kingdom (UK), the negative implications will include extreme weather conditions, changing rainfall patterns and extreme precipitation that would lead to more population exposed to flood risks, a rise in global sea level, shrinking glaciers, loss of different plant and animal biodiversity both on land and aquatic habitats, and a reduction in crop yield [6]. The UK’s target is to reduce GHG emissions to net zero by 2050 compared to 1990 to end its contribution to global warming [6]. Although this is ambitious, the UK has agreed to this commitment as a signatory of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNCCC) Paris Agreement, 2015 [7]. Between 1990 and 2019, the UK was able to reduce its GHG emissions by 40% from 608 MtCO 2 e in 1990 to 365 MtCO 2 e in 2019 [8]. However, between 2019 and 2020, GHG emissions stagnated in agriculture, public and residential [8]. In the UK, each devolved administration, namely Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland Land 2022, 11, 1753. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11101753 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land