Climate‐Driven Limits to Future Carbon Storage in California's Wildland Ecosystems

Coffield, Shane R.; Hemes, Kyle S.; Koven, Charles D.; Goulden, Michael L.; Randerson, James T.

doi:10.1029/2021av000384

Cited by 29 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 85 publications

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“…Three major approaches have been used to examine key determinants of forests’ climate risk, each considering different processes and having distinct uncertainties and limitations: First, global mechanistic vegetation models, such as those included in Earth system models, simulate forest carbon fluxes and pools, climate impacts on those processes, some key climate-sensitive disturbances such as fire, and dynamic growth and recovery after disturbances ( 14 , 15 ). Second, “climate envelope” approaches use empirical models based on relationships between observed climate patterns and forest attributes such as biomass, species presence/abundance, or ecoregion/life zone presence ( 16 – 18 ). Third, empirical assessments of climatic controls on stand-replacing disturbances, typically based on satellite data of forest loss or meta-analyses of field studies, are also common ( 11 , 19 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

A climate risk analysis of Earth’s forests in the 21st century

Anderegg

Acil

et al. 2022

Science

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Earth’s forests harbor extensive biodiversity and are currently a major carbon sink. Forest conservation and restoration can help mitigate climate change; however, climate change could fundamentally imperil forests in many regions and undermine their ability to provide such mitigation. The extent of climate risks facing forests has not been synthesized globally nor have different approaches to quantifying forest climate risks been systematically compared. We combine outputs from multiple mechanistic and empirical approaches to modeling carbon, biodiversity, and disturbance risks to conduct a synthetic climate risk analysis for Earth’s forests in the 21st century. Despite large uncertainty in most regions we find that some forests are consistently at higher risk, including southern boreal forests and those in western North America and parts of the Amazon.

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confidence: 99%

A climate risk analysis of Earth’s forests in the 21st century

Anderegg

Acil

et al. 2022

Science

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“…Furthermore, decisionmakers can use these insights along with others from similar climate change impact studies to assess tradeoffs and identify where land management might be most effective and efficient. For example, Coffield et al (2021) find that management efforts in California should be focused on stabilizing existing forest carbon stocks, rather than emphasizing just carbon gain, by reducing fire risks, thinning, and restoration. Together, such insights on ecosystem service vulnerability to climate change can help managers identify at-risk regions that provide significant and socially important ecosystem service bundles, like California forests, and most effectively and efficiently mitigate impacts to services and subsequently human well-being.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping and modeling the impact of climate change on recreational ecosystem services using machine learning and big data

Manley

Egoh

2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The use of recreational ecosystem services is highly dependent on the surrounding environmental and climate conditions. Due to this dependency, future recreational opportunities provided by nature are at risk from climate change. To understand how climate change will impact recreation we need to understand current recreational patterns, but traditional data is limited and low resolution. Fortunately, social media data presents an opportunity to overcome those data limitations and machine learning offers a tool to effectively use that big data. We use data from the social media site Flickr as a proxy for recreational visitation and random forest to model the relationships between social, environmental, and climate factors and recreation for the peak season (summer) in California. We then use the model to project how non-urban recreation will change as the climate changes. Our model shows that current patterns are exacerbated in the future under climate change, with currently popular summer recreation areas becoming more suitable and unpopular summer recreation areas becoming less suitable for recreation. Our model results have land management implications as recreation regions that see high visitation consequently experience impacts to surrounding ecosystems, ecosystem services, and infrastructure. This information can be used to include climate change impacts into land management plans to more effectively provide sustainable nature recreation opportunities for current and future generations. Furthermore, our study demonstrates that crowdsourced data and machine learning offer opportunities to better integrate socio-ecological systems into climate impacts research and more holistically understand climate change impacts to human well-being.

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“…Warming, vulnerable areas may not be suitable or efficient areas for improved forest management projects, including mid-elevation forest in the Sierra Nevada and forests in the mountains of Southern California. This is especially important as climate change is projected to reduce biomass densities in these areas ( 51 ). In contrast, the forests in the northern coast of California appear to have expanding tree cover where the effects of climate-driven changes in wildfires are not yet having an effect.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote sensing reveals multi-decadal losses of tree cover in California driven by increasing fire disturbance and climate stress

Wang

Randerson

Goulden

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Forests provide natural climate solutions for sequestering carbon and mitigating climate change yet are threatened by increasing temperatures and disturbance. Accurate information on vegetation dynamics is lacking in some regions with forest carbon offset programs and dense forests like California. To address this, we combined remote sensing observations with geospatial databases to develop annual maps of vegetation cover (tree, shrub, herbaceous) and disturbance type (fires, harvest, and forest die-off) in California at 30 m resolution from 1985 to 2021. California lost 3783 km2 of its tree cover area (5.5% relative to initial cover). Early gains in tree cover area were more than offset by fire-driven declines, resulting in greater shrub and herbaceous cover area. Fires and tree cover area loss occurred where temperatures were high or increasing, whereas tree cover gain occurred in cooler areas. Disturbance and warming are threatening the integrity of California’s forests and its carbon offsets program.TeaserClimate and disturbance-driven tree cover loss challenges the viability of forests as natural climate solutions in California

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Climate‐Driven Limits to Future Carbon Storage in California's Wildland Ecosystems

Cited by 29 publications

References 85 publications

A climate risk analysis of Earth’s forests in the 21st century

A climate risk analysis of Earth’s forests in the 21st century

Mapping and modeling the impact of climate change on recreational ecosystem services using machine learning and big data

Remote sensing reveals multi-decadal losses of tree cover in California driven by increasing fire disturbance and climate stress

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