A continent under stress: interactions, feedbacks and risks associated with impact of modified land cover on Australia's climate

Abstract

Global climate change is the major and most urgent global environmental issue. Australia is already experiencing climate change as evidenced by higher temperatures and more frequent and severe droughts. These impacts are compounded by increasing land use pressures on natural resources and native ecosystems. This paper provides a synthesis of the interactions, feedbacks and risks of natural climate variability, climate change and land use/land cover change (LUCC) impacting on the Australian continent and how they vary regionally. We review evidence of climate change and underlying processes resulting from interactions between global warming caused by increased concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases and modification of the land surface. The consequences of ignoring the effect of LUCC on current and future droughts in Australia could have catastrophic consequences for the nation's environment, economy and communities. We highlight the need for more integrated, long-term and adaptive policies and regional natural resource management strategies that restore the beneficial feedbacks between native vegetation cover and local-regional climate, to help ameliorate the impact of global warming.

Application of the extreme learning machine algorithm for the prediction of monthly Effective Drought Index in eastern Australia

“…Deo, 2011;Deo et al, 2009;Dijk et al, 2013;McAlpine et al, 2007;McAlpine et al, 2009). However, in predicting future drought the application of the EDI for drought assessment has been considered superior to the many other indices used in literature (Dogan et al, 2012;Morid et al, 2006;Pandey et al, 2008).…”

Australian net (1950s–1990) soil organic carbon erosion: implications for CO<sub>2</sub> emission and land–atmosphere modelling

“…These changes to land use and management have created phases in the recent soil erosion history. For example, European settlement (from 1788) transformed the Australian environment with extensive clearing of native vegetation for agricultural production, primarily pastoralism and, to a lesser extent, cropping (McAlpine et al, 2009). Marx et al (2014) associated agricultural expansion between 1880 and 1990, compounded by droughts and the dust bowl era, with increased soil erosion.…”

Australia's landscapes in a changing climate—caution, hope, inspiration, and transformation

“…Large-scale vegetation clearing results in transformative changes to river catchments (Walker et al 1989;NLWRA 2001aNLWRA , 2001b) and detectable and potentially significant changes to climate, including through reducing rainfall and increasing severity and intensity of droughts (Makarieva et al 2009;Deo et al 2009;McAlpine et al 2009). Makarieva et al (2009) propose that their findings indicate the potential for strategic reforestation to be used as an applied solution to desertification.…”

“…System change can result from deliberate management interventions, which aim to achieve preferred, defined objectives, or be a result of unpredicted consequences of management, as well as due to external or wildcard factors, such as species invasions, global economic shocks, technology, or climate change. Furthermore, activity at one scale can result in unintended consequences at different scales (IGBP 2001;McAlpine et al 2009). Walker et al (2002) propose that participatory approaches to management are likely to be more adaptive, arguing that it is during periods of greatest instability and turbulence that learning to live in and adapt with systems, rather than control them, is required, because in these periods, system understanding and the impacts of planned interventions are least certain.…”

“…Their appearance, form, functional relationships, and dynamics are shaped by the various ecosystem drivers and feedbacks, and the dynamic relationship between humans and their environments (Holling and Meffe 1996) over long time scales and at a range of spatial scales from local to global (IGBP 2001;McAlpine et al 2009). As linked social-ecological systems, they respond in non-linear ways and have thresholds of change which can tip systems into new states, with new dominant controlling drivers (Scheffer et al 2001;Folke et al 2002).…”