Vulnerability of the global terrestrial ecosystems to climate change

Abstract

Climate change has far-reaching impacts on ecosystems. Recent attempts to quantify such impacts focus on measuring exposure to climate change but largely ignore ecosystem resistance and resilience, which may also affect the vulnerability outcomes. In this study, the relative vulnerability of global terrestrial ecosystems to short-term climate variability was assessed by simultaneously integrating exposure, sensitivity, and resilience at a high spatial resolution (0.05°). The results show that vulnerable areas are currently distributed primarily in plains. Responses to climate change vary among ecosystems and deserts and xeric shrublands are the most vulnerable biomes. Global vulnerability patterns are determined largely by exposure, while ecosystem sensitivity and resilience may exacerbate or alleviate external climate pressures at local scales; there is a highly significant negative correlation between exposure and sensitivity. Globally, 61.31% of the terrestrial vegetated area is capable of mitigating climate change impacts and those areas are concentrated in polar regions, boreal forests, tropical rainforests, and intact forests. Under current sensitivity and resilience conditions, vulnerable areas are projected to develop in high Northern Hemisphere latitudes in the future. The results suggest that integrating all three aspects of vulnerability (exposure, sensitivity, and resilience) may offer more comprehensive and spatially explicit adaptation strategies to reduce the impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems.

Spatial gradients in country‐level population trends of European birds

“…Cold‐adapted species showed strong declines towards the north‐west. This pattern corresponds with high ecosystem sensitivity to warming in North‐Western Europe (Li, Wu, Liu, Zhang, & Li, ) and unfavourable population status of the upland and Arctic species caused by the climate change (Scridel et al, ). The rate of warming is particularly high in northern latitudes (Gilg et al, ) with adverse consequences for the whole ecosystem (Descamps et al, ).…”

Tree resilience to drought increases in the Tibetan Plateau

“…This observation indicates an increased tree resilience, which is represented by the increased magnitude of tree reaction to drought events. Li, Wu, Liu, Zhang, and Li (2018) found that resilience exhibited an obvious unimodal variation along the gradient of latitude. Lucash et al (2017) reported that climate change lowered forest resilience in their studies of climate projections across north-central Minnesota.…”

“…Lucash et al (2017) reported that climate change lowered forest resilience in their studies of climate projections across north-central Minnesota. Li, Wu, Liu, Zhang, and Li (2018) found that resilience exhibited an obvious unimodal variation along the gradient of latitude. We hypothesize that the F I G U R E 4 Scatterplots of regional tree resistance and recovery with their predicting factors.…”

Multiple axes of ecological vulnerability to climate change

“…High temporal variability could select for resilient individuals in long‐lived species, and for adaptive genetic variation in populations of short‐lived species. Connections between climate variability and tolerance have roots in long‐standing macroecological hypotheses such as Janzen's () treatise on high tropical mountain passes and Rapoport's rule about latitudinal gradients in niche breadth (Stevens, ), and have gained renewed attention in recent work on climate change vulnerability (Klausmeyer et al, ; Li, Wu, Liu, Zhang, & Li, ; Mahony & Cannon, ; Mora et al, ; Sandel et al, ; Tewksbury et al, ). In cases where it is suspected that local adaptation, extreme climate events, or range limitation by non‐climatic factors are important, or where the idea of an evolutionarily coherent climatic niche seems inappropriate due to the nature of the focal system, local historic variability may provide a better proxy for sensitivity than do range‐wide niche models.…”