Physical and biological feedbacks of deforestation

Runyan, Christiane W.; D’Odorico, Paolo; Lawrence, Deborah

doi:10.1029/2012rg000394

Cited by 96 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 453 publications

(455 reference statements)

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“…But this is not the case for periods of trending global fire activity, as during rapid climate change (Prentice et al, 2011) or ecosystem shifts (Runyan et al, 2012), when the fire carbon source and sink are out of balance and atmospheric CO 2 concentrations are affected on a long-term basis . Anthropogenic changes to land cover can also alter wildfire area burned and emissions (Harrison et al, 2010;Marlon et al, 2008).…”

Section: Fire-lulcc Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies have generally concluded that, globally, fires have been reduced by increases in land management over the 20th century (Houghton et al, 1999;Marlon et al, 2008;Yang et al, 2014). However, local-and regionalscale research show vastly different fire responses to land cover change and land management in different ecosystems (Cochrane and Barber, 2009;Archibald et al, 2009;Runyan et al, 2012). Satellite observations of African savannah show that a portion of the decrease in fires that occurred over the first decade of the 21st century resulted from conversion of savannah to croplands (Andela and van der Werf, 2014).…”

Section: Fire-lulcc Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, estimates of the efficacy of LULCC biophysical effects, which account for varying climate responses among forcing agents, range from 0.3 to 5 depending on model assumptions (Hansen et al, 2005;Davin et al, 2007;Cherubini et al, 2012) and, being defined by the global climate response, may not apply equally to specific source locations. Therefore we adopt RF as an assessment metric and acknowledge the uncertainty regarding the climate response to the different forcing agents, and the limits of the RF concept for predicting the diverse climate impacts of land use (Betts, 2008;Runyan et al, 2012). Pongratz and Caldeira (2012) show that preindustrial LULCC, which we do not consider in our study, accounts for less than 10 % of historical anthropogenic climate change (measured as global surface temperature change), but can alter the proportional contributions of individual countries to climate change in important ways.…”

Section: Use and Calculation Of Global Rfsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Local sources of global climate forcing from different categories of land use activities

Ward

Mahowald

2015

Earth Syst. Dynam.

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Abstract. Identifying and quantifying the sources of climate impacts from land use and land cover change (LULCC) is necessary to optimize policies regarding LULCC for climate change mitigation. These climate impacts are typically defined relative to emissions of CO 2 , or sometimes emissions of other long-lived greenhouse gases. Here we use previously published estimates of the radiative forcing (RF) of LULCC that include the short-lived forcing agents O 3 and aerosols, in addition to long-lived greenhouse gases and land albedo change, for six projections of LULCC as a metric for quantifying climate impacts. The LULCC RF is attributed to three categories of LULCC activities: direct modifications to land cover, agriculture, and wildfire response, and sources of the forcing are ascribed to individual grid points for each sector. Results for the year 2010 show substantial positive forcings from the direct modifications and agriculture sectors, particularly from south and southeast Asia, and a smaller magnitude negative forcing response from wildfires. The spatial distribution of future sources of LULCC RF is highly scenario-dependent, but we show that future forest area change can be used as a predictor of the future RF from direct modification activities, especially in the tropics, suggesting that deforestation-prevention policies that value land based on its C-content may be particularly effective at mitigating climate forcing originating in the tropics from this sector. However, the response of wildfire RF to tropical land cover changes is not as easily scalable and yet imposes a non-trivial feedback onto the total LULCC RF.

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Section: Fire-lulcc Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fire-lulcc Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Use and Calculation Of Global Rfsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Local sources of global climate forcing from different categories of land use activities

Ward

Mahowald

2015

Earth Syst. Dynam.

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“…This method is particularly suitable for conceptual hydrological models (for a summary see Blöschl et al, 2013c andParajka et al, 2013). However, a drawback of the method is that one usually assumes that the spatial differences in soil parameters apply immediately to the location where land use has been changed, while soils can take decades to respond to land use changes (Runyan et al, 2012).…”

Section: (Iii) Trading Space For Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding flood regime changes in Europe: a state-of-the-art assessment

Hall

Arheimer

Borga

et al. 2014

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

482

335

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Abstract. There is growing concern that flooding is becoming more frequent and severe in Europe. A better understanding of flood regime changes and their drivers is therefore needed. The paper reviews the current knowledge on flood regime changes in European rivers that has traditionally been obtained through two alternative research approaches. The first approach is the data-based detection of changes in observed flood events. Current methods are reviewed together with their challenges and opportunities. For example, observation biases, the merging of different data sources and accounting for nonlinear drivers and responses. The second approach consists of modelled scenarios of future floods. Challenges and opportunities associated with flood change scenarios are discussed such as fully accounting for uncertainties in the modelling cascade and feedbacks. To make progress in flood change research, we suggest that a synthesis of these two approaches is needed. This can be achieved by focusing on long duration records and flood-rich and flood-poor periods rather than on short duration flood trends only, by formally attributing causes of observed flood changes, by validating scenarios against observed flood regime dynamics, and by developing low-dimensional models of flood changes and feedbacks. The paper finishes with a call for a joint European flood change research network.

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“…Finally, the inhomogeneous distribution of forcing from surface albedo changes and short-lived trace gas and aerosol species could lead to non-additive (A. D. and highly variable local climate responses . Therefore, we use the RF for our assessment of global-scale climate impacts and acknowledge the limits of the RF concept for predicting the diverse and often local impacts of land use (Betts, 2008;Runyan et al, 2012).…”

Section: Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential climate forcing of land use and land cover change

2014

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Abstract. Pressure on land resources is expected to increase as global population continues to climb and the world becomes more affluent, swelling the demand for food. Changing climate may exert additional pressures on natural lands as present-day productive regions may shift, or soil quality may degrade, and the recent rise in demand for biofuels increases competition with edible crops for arable land. Given these projected trends there is a need to understand the global climate impacts of land use and land cover change (LULCC). Here we quantify the climate impacts of global LULCC in terms of modifications to the balance between incoming and outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere (radiative forcing, RF) that are caused by changes in long-lived and short-lived greenhouse gas concentrations, aerosol effects, and land surface albedo. We attribute historical changes in terrestrial carbon storage, global fire emissions, secondary organic aerosol emissions, and surface albedo to LULCC using simulations with the Community Land Model version 3.5. These LULCC emissions are combined with estimates of agricultural emissions of important trace gases and mineral dust in two sets of Community Atmosphere Model simulations to calculate the RF of changes in atmospheric chemistry and aerosol concentrations attributed to LULCC. With all forcing agents considered together, we show that 40 % (±16 %) of the present-day anthropogenic RF can be attributed to LULCC. Changes in the emission of non-CO 2 greenhouse gases and aerosols from LULCC enhance the total LULCC RF by a factor of 2 to 3 with respect to the LULCC RF from CO 2 alone. This enhancement factor also applies to projected LULCC RF, which we compute for four future scenarios associated with the Representative Concentration Pathways. We attribute total RFs between 0.9 and 1.9 W m −2 to LULCC for the year 2100 (relative to a preindustrial state). To place an upper bound on the potential of LULCC to alter the global radiation budget, we include a fifth scenario in which all arable land is cultivated by 2100. This theoretical extreme case leads to a LULCC RF of 3.9 W m −2 (±0.9 W m −2 ), suggesting that not only energy policy but also land policy is necessary to minimize future increases in RF and associated climate changes.

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Physical and biological feedbacks of deforestation

Cited by 96 publications

References 453 publications

Local sources of global climate forcing from different categories of land use activities

Local sources of global climate forcing from different categories of land use activities

Understanding flood regime changes in Europe: a state-of-the-art assessment

Potential climate forcing of land use and land cover change

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