Assessing climate change impacts, benefits of mitigation, and uncertainties on major global forest regions under multiple socioeconomic and emissions scenarios

Kim, John B.; Monier, Erwan; Sohngen, Brent; Pitts, G. Stephen; Drapek, Raymond J.; McFarland, James; Ohrel, Sara; Cole, Jefferson

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa63fc

Cited by 50 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…Our simulations projected a slight increase of carbon biomass. This result is also consistent with previous projections in tropical forests which suggested that climate change induces a shift from low-biomass forests to high-biomass forests (Kim et al 2017). The increase of carbon biomass projected in our baseline scenario, without climate change, is consistent with observations of forest ageing.…”

Section: Climate Change Would Accelerate the Dynamics Of Tropical Forsupporting

confidence: 92%

Climate change would lead to a sharp acceleration of Central African forests dynamics by the end of the century

Claeys

Gourlet‐Fleury

Picard

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Impacts of climate change on the future dynamics of Central African forests are still largely unknown, despite the acuteness of the expected climate changes and the extent of these forests. The high diversity of species and the potentially equivalent diversity of responses to climate modifications are major difficulties encountered when using predictive models to evaluate these impacts. In this study, we applied a mixture of inhomogeneous matrix models to a long-term experimental site located in M'Baïki forests, in the Central African Republic. This model allows the clustering of tree species into processesbased groups while simultaneously selecting explanatory climate and stand variables at the group-level. Using downscaled outputs of 10general circulation models (GCM), we projected the future forest dynamics up to the end of the century, under constant climate and Representative Concentration Pathways4.5 and8.5. Through comparative analyses across GCM versions, we identified tree species meta-groups, which are more adapted than ecological guilds to describe the diversity of tree species dynamics and their responses to climate change. Projections under constant climate were consistent with a forest ageing phenomenon, with a slowdown in tree growth and a reduction of the relative abundance of short-lived pioneers. Projections under climate change showed a general increase in growth, mortality and recruitment. This acceleration in forest dynamics led to a strong natural thinning effect, with different magnitudes across species. These differences caused a compositional shift in favour of long-lived pioneers, at the detriment of shade-bearers. Consistent with other field studies and projections, our results show the importance of elucidating the diversity of tree species responses when considering the general sensitivity of Central African forests dynamics to climate change.

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Section: Climate Change Would Accelerate the Dynamics Of Tropical Forsupporting

confidence: 92%

Climate change would lead to a sharp acceleration of Central African forests dynamics by the end of the century

Claeys

Gourlet‐Fleury

Picard

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…Dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) such as CABLE [32], CLM4 [33], ORCHIDEE [34], LPJ [35], VEGAS [36] and MC2 [37] have been created to analyze the broad vegetation response to climate change. However, most DGVMs simulate vegetation changes at a regional or global level, and has been rarely tested at a basin level with such complex terrain and surface features.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of the Coupling between Vegetation Leaf Area and Climate in a Multifunctional Watershed, Northwestern China

et al. 2016

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Accurate detection and quantification of vegetation dynamics and drivers of observed climatic and anthropogenic change in space and time is fundamental for our understanding of the atmosphere-biosphere interactions at local and global scales. This case study examined the coupled spatial patterns of vegetation dynamics and climatic variabilities during the past three decades in the Upper Heihe River Basin (UHRB), a complex multiple use watershed in arid northwestern China. We apply empirical orthogonal function (EOF) and singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis to isolate and identify the spatial patterns of satellite-derived leaf area index (LAI) and their close relationship with the variability of an aridity index (AI = Precipitation/Potential Evapotranspiration). Results show that UHRB has become increasingly warm and wet during the past three decades. In general, the rise of air temperature and precipitation had a positive impact on mean LAI at the annual scale. At the monthly scale, LAI variations had a lagged response to climate. Two major coupled spatial change patterns explained 29% and 41% of the LAI dynamics during 1983-2000 and 2001-2010, respectively. The strongest connections between climate and LAI were found in the southwest part of the basin prior to 2000, but they shifted towards the north central area afterwards, suggesting that the sensitivity of LAI to climate varied over time, and that human disturbances might play an important role in altering LAI patterns. At the basin level, the positive effects of regional climate warming and precipitation increase as well as local ecological restoration efforts overwhelmed the negative effects of overgrazing. The study results offer insights about the coupled effects of climatic variability and grazing on ecosystem structure and functions at a watershed scale. Findings from this study are useful for land managers and policy makers to make better decisions in response to climate change in the study region.

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“…In contrast, projections using DGVMs show a widespread increase in vegetation carbon under the global warming scenario with CO 2 fertilization of photosynthesis (Friend et al, 2014;Knorr et al, 2016). In addition, compound factors such as greenhouse gas mitigation (Kim et al, 2017), population change (Knorr et al, 2016), pine beetle outbreak (Kurz et al, 2008), and fire management (Doerr and Santin, 2016) may exert varied impacts on future vegetation and fuel load. Although we apply constant fuel load, we consider changes of fuel moisture because warmer climate states tend to dry fuel and increase fuel consumption .…”

Section: Limitations and Uncertaintiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With both fuel load and burning severity, we derive fuel consumption and further calculate biomass burned in boreal North America with the predicted area burned. As in Amiro et al (2009) and , we apply constant fuel load for both present day and mid-century because opposite and uncertain factors influence future projections (Kurz et al, 2008;Heyder et al, 2011;Friend et al, 2014;Knorr et al, 2016;Kim et al, 2017). Instead, we consider changes in burning severity due to perturbations in fuel moisture as indicated by CFWI .…”

Section: Wildfire Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Future inhibition of ecosystem productivity by increasing wildfire pollution over boreal North America

Yue¹,

Strada²,

Unger³

et al. 2017

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. Biomass burning is an important source of tropospheric ozone (O 3 ) and aerosols. These air pollutants can affect vegetation photosynthesis through stomatal uptake (for O 3 ) and light scattering and absorption (for aerosols). Wildfire area burned is projected to increase significantly in boreal North America by the mid-century, while little is known about the impacts of enhanced emissions on the terrestrial carbon budget. Here, combining site-level and satellite observations and a carbon-chemistry-climate model, we estimate the impacts of fire emitted O 3 and aerosols on net primary productivity (NPP) over boreal North America. Fire emissions are calculated based on an ensemble projection from 13 climate models. In the present day, wildfire enhances surface O 3 by 2 ppbv (7 %) and aerosol optical depth (AOD) at 550 nm by 0.03 (26 %) in the summer. By mid-century, area burned is predicted to increase by 66 % in boreal North America, contributing more O 3 (13 %) and aerosols (37 %). Fire O 3 causes negligible impacts on NPP because ambient O 3 concentration (with fire contributions) is below the damage threshold of 40 ppbv for 90 % summer days. Fire aerosols reduce surface solar radiation but enhance atmospheric absorption, resulting in enhanced air stability and intensified regional drought. The domain of this drying is confined to the north in the present day but extends southward by 2050 due to increased fire emissions. Consequently, wildfire aerosols enhance NPP by 72 Tg C yr −1 in the present day but decrease NPP by 118 Tg C yr −1 in the future, mainly because of the soil moisture perturbations. Our results suggest that future wildfire may accelerate boreal carbon loss, not only through direct emissions increasing from 68 Tg C yr −1 at present day to 130 Tg C yr −1 by mid-century but also through the biophysical impacts of fire aerosols.

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Assessing climate change impacts, benefits of mitigation, and uncertainties on major global forest regions under multiple socioeconomic and emissions scenarios

Cited by 50 publications

References 80 publications

Climate change would lead to a sharp acceleration of Central African forests dynamics by the end of the century

Climate change would lead to a sharp acceleration of Central African forests dynamics by the end of the century

Detection of the Coupling between Vegetation Leaf Area and Climate in a Multifunctional Watershed, Northwestern China

Future inhibition of ecosystem productivity by increasing wildfire pollution over boreal North America

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