Impacts of Future Climate Changes on Spatio-Temporal Distribution of Terrestrial Ecosystems over China

Abstract

Understanding the response of terrestrial ecosystems to future climate changes would substantially contribute to the scientific assessment of vegetation–climate interactions. Here, the spatiotemporal distribution and dynamics of vegetation in China were projected and compared based on comprehensive sequential classification system (CSCS) model under representative concentration pathway (RCP) RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 scenarios, and five sensitivity levels were proposed. The results show that the CSCS model performs well in simulating vegetation distribution. The number of vegetation types would increase from 36 to 40. Frigid–perhumid rain tundra and alpine meadow are the most distributed vegetation types, with an area of more than 78.45 × 104 km2, whereas there are no climate conditions suitable for tropical–extra-arid tropical desert in China. Some plants would benefit from climate changes to a certain extent. Warm temperate–arid warm temperate zone semidesert would expand by more than 1.82% by the 2080s. A continuous expansion of more than 18.81 × 104 km2 and northward shift of more than 124.93 km in tropical forest would occur across all three scenarios. However, some ecosystems would experience inevitable changes. More than 1.33% of cool temperate–extra-arid temperate zone desert would continuously shrink. Five sensitivity levels present an interphase distribution. More extreme scenarios would result in wider ecosystem responses. The evolutionary trend from cold–arid vegetation to warm–wet vegetation is a prominent feature despite the variability in ecosystem responses to climate changes.

Spatiotemporal Variations of Chinese Terrestrial Ecosystems in Response to Land Use and Future Climate Change

“…Under various climate scenarios, the relationships between vegetation and climate change are inconsistent. More extreme scenarios would result in wider ecosystem responses [50], which provides potential value for our subsequent study of vegetation change in China under different climate scenarios.…”

Natural Vegetation Succession Under Climate Change and the Combined Effects on Net Primary Productivity

“…In contrast, the comprehensive sequential classification system (CSCS) categorizes natural vegetation according to specific hydrothermal conditions in combination with vegetation, soil, and bioclimatic characteristics (Ren et al, 2008). Several studies have verified the reliability of the CSCS in theory and practice (Li et al, 2021;Liang et al, 2012;Lin et al, 2013). In the pursuit of estimating vegetation NPP, researchers have developed numerous statistical, biological process, and light-use efficiency (LUE) models.…”