Recent global warming as a proximate cause of deforestation and forest degradation in northern Pakistan

Abstract

Instrumental climatological records such as weather stations data of northern areas of Pakistan are not sufficient to assess the forest extreme events reliably. To understand the past climatic variability, tree ring width based climatic reconstruction is the best alternative to trace climate variability that goes back in time. Quercus Incana is the most sensitive species to drought and climatic variation in northern Pakistan. However, very little research quantifies the rate of ongoing climatic changes. A total of 65 tree cores were collected from two sites to understand the radial growth of Q. Incana to extreme drought events. The radial growth is mainly affected by high temperatures during May-July. In addition, radial growth exhibits a positive correlation with February-June precipitation while it is negatively correlated with the September precipitation. The radial growth decrease, particularly in harsh climatic conditions. The reconstructed tree ring record was strongly coherent with the May-June self-calibrated Palmer drought severity index (scPDSI) and reliable in reconstructing drought variability for the period 1750–2014. During the past 264 years, wet periods were found during 1980–2010, 1812–1836, and 1754–1760, while dry periods were found during 1896–1922, 1864–1876, and 1784–1788. Our reconstruction explains 39.8% of the scPDSI variance. The extreme drought and wet years we arrived at were in close agreement with the drought and wet periods that occurred in northern Pakistan. Wavelet analysis revealed drought variability at periodicities of 2.2–2.5, 3.3, 3–4, 16.7, 16.8, and 68–78.8 years. Hence it is concluded that deforestation and forest degradation rate increased with extreme drought and wet years. Overall, the variation of drought in northern Pakistan seems to have been affected due to El Nino south oscillation, Pacific decadal oscillation, or Atlantic multi-decadal oscillations.

Evaluating the Socioeconomic Factors on Deforestation in Northern Pakistan: A Study on Existing Economic Incentive Tools for Reducing Deforestation

“…This has a direct impact on the climatic and economic conditions in the area. Within these protected areas, mining activities are reduced due to this continuous deforestation and degradation [7][8][9][10]. Due to even minor rain events, forest loss poses a risk of erosion and this especially applies to soil on steep slopes, as does the precipitous mountainous terrain in GB province, Pakistan [11,12].…”

Retraction: Recent global warming as a proximate cause of deforestation and forest degradation in northern Pakistan

“…The PLOS ONE Editors retract this article [ 1 ] because it was identified as one of a series of submissions for which we have concerns about authorship, competing interests, and peer review. We regret that the issues were not addressed prior to the article’s publication.…”