Frost Followed the Plow: Impacts of Deforestation on the Climate of the United States

Bonan, Gordon B.

doi:10.2307/2641398

Cited by 20 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Our approach compared a natural vegetation scenario to a bareground scenario and thus estimated the potential contribution of natural ecosystems to biophysical climate regulation, but conversion of natural land to other land-cover types can have different results. For example, replacing forest with bare ground in this study generally increased air temperature, however, in the US, conversion of forests to croplands generally decreases air temperature (Bonan 1999(Bonan , 2001. Both bare ground and croplands absorb less incoming sunlight, but croplands and forests transpire similar amounts of water.…”

Section: N Limitations Of the Climate Regulation Indexmentioning

confidence: 61%

An alternative approach for quantifying climate regulation by ecosystems

West

Narisma

Barford

et al. 2010

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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Ecosystems provide multiple benefits to people, including climate regulation. Previous efforts to quantify this ecosystem service have been either largely conceptual or based on complex atmospheric models. Here, we review previous research on this topic and propose a new and simple analytical approach for estimating the physical regulation of climate by ecosystems. The proposed metric estimates how land‐cover change affects the loading of heat and moisture into the atmosphere, while also accounting for the relative contribution of wind‐transported heat and moisture. Although feedback dynamics between land, atmosphere, and oceans are not modeled, the metric compares well with previous studies for several regions. We find that ecosystems have the strongest influence on surface climatic conditions in the boreal and tropical regions, where temperature and moisture changes could substantially offset or magnify greenhouse‐forced changes. This approach can be extended to estimate the effects of changing land cover on local, physical climate processes that are relevant to society.

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Section: N Limitations Of the Climate Regulation Indexmentioning

confidence: 61%

An alternative approach for quantifying climate regulation by ecosystems

West

Narisma

Barford

et al. 2010

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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“…BONAN ET AL. : PLANT FUNCTIONAL TYPES AND CLIMATE MODELS on climate [Bonan, 1995b], the effect of vegetation and soil [Kutzbach et al, 1996] and lakes and wetlands [Coe and Bonan, 1997] on the African monsoon in the middle Holocene, the effect of soil water on floods and droughts in the Mississippi River basin [Bonan and Stillwell-Soller, 1998], the effect of tundra ecosystems on arctic climate [Lynch et al, 1999], and the effects of temperate deforestation on climate [Bonan, 1997[Bonan, , 1999.…”

Section: -6mentioning

confidence: 99%

Landscapes as patches of plant functional types: An integrating concept for climate and ecosystem models

Bonan

Levis

Kergoat

et al. 2002

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

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544

463

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While most land models developed for use with climate models represent vegetation as discrete biomes, this is, at least for mixed life‐form biomes, inconsistent with the leaf‐level and whole‐plant physiological parameterizations needed to couple these biogeophysical models with biogeochemical and ecosystem dynamics models. In this paper, we present simulations with the National Center for Atmospheric Research land surface model (NCAR LSM) that examined the effect of representing vegetation as patches of plant functional types (PFTs) that coexist within a model grid cell. This approach is consistent with ecological theory and models and allows for unified treatment of vegetation in climate and ecosystem models. In the standard NCAR LSM the PFT composition and leaf area for each grid cell are obtained by classifying grid cells as 1 of 28 possible biomes. Here, we develop a data set from 1‐km satellite data that provides each model grid cell a unique PFT composition and leaf area for each PFT. Global simulations at 3° × 3° spatial resolution showed that ground temperature, ground evaporation, and northern high‐latitude winter albedo exhibited direct responses to these landscape changes, which led to indirect effects such as in soil moisture and sensible and latent heat fluxes. Additional simulations at 2° × 2° and 1° × 1° spatial resolution showed that low‐resolution simulations masked landscape heterogeneity in both approaches but the satellite‐based, continuous representation of vegetation reduced model sensitivity to resolution. It is argued that the use of spatially continuous distributions of coexisting PFTs is a necessary step to link climate and ecosystem models.

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“…www.frontiersinecology.org © The Ecological Society of America deforestation in the Amazon may therefore be a significantly warmer and somewhat drier local climate. While the impacts of tropical deforestation have received considerable attention, other studies have shown that land-use and land-cover change in semi-arid (Zeng et al 1999;Wang and Eltahir 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2000d, temperate (Copeland et al 1996;Bonan et al 1997Bonan et al , 1999Reale and Dirmeyer 2000;Reale and Shukla 2000;Heck et al 2001) and boreal ecosystems (Bonan et al 1992(Bonan et al , 1995 can also greatly affect the climate.…”

Section: Biophysical Impacts Of Changing Land Use and Covermentioning

confidence: 99%

Green Surprise? How Terrestrial Ecosystems Could Affect Earth's Climate

Costa¹,

Delire²,

Ramankutty³

et al. 2003

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

135

155

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While the earth's climate can affect the structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, the process also works in reverse. As a result, changes in terrestrial ecosystems may influence climate through both biophysical and biogeochemical processes. This two-way link between the physical climate system and the biosphere is under increasing scrutiny. We review recent developments in the analysis of this interaction, focusing in particular on how alterations in the structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, through either human land-use practices or global climate change, may affect the future of the earth's climate. In a nutshell:• Traditionally, discussions of climatic change have focused on how such changes will affect ecosystems • Recent work suggests that changes in ecosystems can, in turn, affect climate • Preliminary computer modeling studies indicate that ecosystems may produce "positive feedbacks" on global warming, making the planet warmer than originally expected • Further research is needed to quantify the role of ecological feedbacks in the climate system 42 www.frontiersinecology.org

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Frost Followed the Plow: Impacts of Deforestation on the Climate of the United States

Cited by 20 publications

References 31 publications

An alternative approach for quantifying climate regulation by ecosystems

An alternative approach for quantifying climate regulation by ecosystems

Landscapes as patches of plant functional types: An integrating concept for climate and ecosystem models

Green Surprise? How Terrestrial Ecosystems Could Affect Earth's Climate

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