Accelerated dryland expansion under climate change

Huang, Jianping; Yu, Hongbin; Guan, Xiaodan; Wang, Guoyin; Guo, Rui

doi:10.1038/nclimate2837

Cited by 1,718 publications

(1,114 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Here we show that increases in aridity, such as those predicted by climate-change models (15,16), reduce the diversity and abundance of soil bacteria and fungi in drylands, the largest biome on Earth (39). These responses are mainly driven by reductions in soil organic C content associated with increases in aridity and, in the case of microbial abundance, with increases in diurnal temperature variations.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing aridity reduces soil microbial diversity and abundance in global drylands

Maestre

Delgado‐Baquerizo

Jeffries

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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581

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Soil bacteria and fungi play key roles in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, yet our understanding of their responses to climate change lags significantly behind that of other organisms. This gap in our understanding is particularly true for drylands, which occupy ∼41% of Earth´s surface, because no global, systematic assessments of the joint diversity of soil bacteria and fungi have been conducted in these environments to date. Here we present results from a study conducted across 80 dryland sites from all continents, except Antarctica, to assess how changes in aridity affect the composition, abundance, and diversity of soil bacteria and fungi. The diversity and abundance of soil bacteria and fungi was reduced as aridity increased. These results were largely driven by the negative impacts of aridity on soil organic carbon content, which positively affected the abundance and diversity of both bacteria and fungi. Aridity promoted shifts in the composition of soil bacteria, with increases in the relative abundance of Chloroflexi and α-Proteobacteria and decreases in Acidobacteria and Verrucomicrobia. Contrary to what has been reported by previous continental and global-scale studies, soil pH was not a major driver of bacterial diversity, and fungal communities were dominated by Ascomycota. Our results fill a critical gap in our understanding of soil microbial communities in terrestrial ecosystems. They suggest that changes in aridity, such as those predicted by climatechange models, may reduce microbial abundance and diversity, a response that will likely impact the provision of key ecosystem services by global drylands.bacteria | fungi | climate change | arid | semiarid

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing aridity reduces soil microbial diversity and abundance in global drylands

Maestre

Delgado‐Baquerizo

Jeffries

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

728

581

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Global warming of 0.6 °C during the 20th century, translates into amplified air temperature increases (Huang et al 2015) in northern high latitudes (Miller et al 2010) and arid regions (Huang et al 2017), but the timing and strength of the vegetation responses in these remote areas is still poorly understood. For example, 20th century warming caused shrub expansion ("arctic greening") in northern Siberia (Sturm et al 2001;Frost and Epstein 2014), whereas forest cover was reduced in central Yakutia from 1982 to 2005 due to permafrost degradation (Lloyd et al 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biome changes and their inferred climatic drivers in northern and eastern continental Asia at selected times since 40 cal ka bp

Tian

Cao²,

Dallmeyer

et al. 2017

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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Recent global warming is pronounced in high-latitude regions (e.g. northern Asia), and will cause the vegetation to change. Future vegetation trends (e.g. the "arctic greening") will feed back into atmospheric circulation and the global climate system. Understanding the nature and causes of past vegetation changes is important for predicting the composition and distribution of future vegetation communities. Fossil pollen records from 468 sites in northern and eastern Asia were biomised at selected times between 40 cal ka bp and today. Biomes were also simulated using a climate-driven biome model and results from the two approaches compared in order to help understand the mechanisms behind the observed vegetation changes. The consistent biome results inferred by both approaches reveal that long-term and broad-scale vegetation patterns reflect globalto hemispheric-scale climate changes. Forest biomes increase around the beginning of the late deglaciation, become more widespread during the early and middle Holocene, and decrease in the late Holocene in fringe areas of the Asian Summer Monsoon. At the southern and southwestern margins of the taiga, forest increases in the early Holocene and shows notable species succession, which may have been caused by winter warming at ca. 7 cal ka bp. At the northeastern taiga margin (central Yakutia and northeastern Siberia), shrub expansion during the last deglaciation appears to prevent the permafrost from thawing and hinders the northward expansion of evergreen needle-leaved species until ca. 7 cal ka bp. The vegetationclimate disequilibrium during the early Holocene in the taiga-tundra transition zone suggests that projected climate warming will not cause a northward expansion of evergreen needle-leaved species.

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“…The dominant role of the thermodynamic temperature warming in semi-arid areas indicates that dry lands may suffer from intense human activities that can induce strong local thermodynamic forcing due to the fragile ecosystems in dry lands, which are sensitive to strong interactions between human activities and climate changes (Charney 1975;Huang et al, 2008Huang et al, , 2010Rotenberg and Yakir, 2010). The semi-arid regions have expanded in the past half century (Feng and Fu, 2013;Li et al, 2015) and Huang et al (2016) projected that the dry lands will continue to expand in the future. Increased aridity, enhanced warming and unreasonable land use under drought conditions in semi-arid regions will cause land degradation and desertification.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different roles of dynamic and thermodynamic effects in enhanced semi‐arid warming

Guo

Guan

et al. 2017

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Enhanced warming in semi-arid regions has received much attention since it was first proposed, but the primary driver of this phenomenon remains unknown. This study applied dynamical adjustment to surface air temperature and partitioned the warming into two separate components: a thermodynamically forced component and a dynamically induced component. The results show that the mean amount of thermodynamic warming in the Northern Hemisphere in the study period 1902-2011 was 1.36 ∘ C/109 years and that the amount of dynamic warming was 0.14 ∘ C/109 years. In the mid-latitude zones of Asia, Europe, and North America, the thermodynamic warming was 1.60, 1.19, and 1.32 ∘ C/109 years, respectively, and the corresponding dynamic warming was 0.26, 0.14, and 0.09 ∘ C/109 years. Obviously, higher thermodynamic temperature warming was observed in semi-arid regions, suggesting that the enhanced semi-arid warming (ESAW) is the result of local thermodynamic effects. Thus, different local thermodynamic effects are responsible for the warming discrepancies in the semi-arid regions of Asia, Europe, and North America. Moreover, the considerable bias of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) ensemble mean temperature trend appeared in semi-arid regions rather than other regions indicate that the simulation of semi-arid regions is particularly complex and difficult.

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Accelerated dryland expansion under climate change

Cited by 1,718 publications

References 28 publications

Increasing aridity reduces soil microbial diversity and abundance in global drylands

Increasing aridity reduces soil microbial diversity and abundance in global drylands

Biome changes and their inferred climatic drivers in northern and eastern continental Asia at selected times since 40 cal ka bp

Different roles of dynamic and thermodynamic effects in enhanced semi‐arid warming

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