Quantitative Assessment of Climate Change Impacts On Forest Ecosystem

Abstract

Characterizing and predicting the response of terrestrial ecosystems to global change is one of the key challenges of contemporary ecology and ecological conservation. The impact of climate change on forest ecosystem has been widely studied, but it rarely uses method of multi-index fusion for quantitative evaluation. In this study, forest ecosystem in Heilongjiang Province was investigated. Based on remote sensing, meteorological observation, ground survey, geographic information, MAXENT model, CASA model, carbon sequestration potential model of Zhou Guangsheng-Zhang Xinshi, pixel dichotomy model and Savitzky Golay Filter model were used. On this basis, we analysed the change characteristics of forest distribution, net primary productivity and vegetation coverage. We also established a model for evaluating the impact of forest ecosystem change on climate, and made a quantitative assessment of the impact on climate. Our results indicate the following: (1) From 2001 to 2019, the forest area in Heilongjiang Province ranged from 2.34 × 105 to 2.46 × 105 km2, the forest NPP ranged from 40.48 to 555.32 gC/m2/a, and the vegetation coverage ranged from 42.42% to 67.64%, both of which showed a significant upward trend; (2) The values of forest ecological role were significantly positively correlated with the climatic potential; (3) The results of climate impact assessment of forest ecosystem change showed the contribution rate of climate change to forest ecosystem change was negatively correlated with forest coverage, which varied from 4.79% to 18.07% in different regions (cities) of the province. This study contribute to improving evaluating influence of climate change on forest ecosystem.