Projects per year
Abstract
Climate change and land-use change are two major drivers of biome shifts causing habitat and biodiversity loss. What is missing is a continental-scale future projection of the estimated relative impacts of both drivers on biome shifts over the course of this century. Here, we provide such a projection for the biodiverse region of Latin America under four socio-economic development scenarios. We find that across all scenarios 5-6% of the total area will undergo biome shifts that can be attributed to climate change until 2099. The relative impact of climate change on biome shifts may overtake land-use change even under an optimistic climate scenario, if land-use expansion is halted by the mid-century. We suggest that constraining land-use change and preserving the remaining natural vegetation early during this century creates opportunities to mitigate climate-change impacts during the second half of this century. Our results may guide the evaluation of socio-economic scenarios in terms of their potential for biome conservation under global change.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 3689-3701 |
Journal | Global Change Biology |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Keywords
- Attribution
- Biome shifts
- Climate change
- Land-use change
- Latin America
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Large-scale impact of climate change vs. land-use change on future biome shifts in Latin America'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
-
ROBIN: Role Of Biodiversity In climate change mitigatioN
1/11/11 → 31/10/15
Project: EU research project