Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Li, Delong
• Wu, Shuyao
• Liu, Laibao
• Zhang, Yatong
• Li, Shuangcheng

Titel

Vulnerability of the global terrestrial ecosystems to climate change

Ist Teil von

• Global change biology, 2018-09, Vol.24 (9), p.4095-4106

Ort / Verlag

England: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 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. Early global, high resolution vulnerability map only considered external climate exposure and ignored the intrinsic stability of ecosystems. This work firstly produces high spatial resolution maps of global vulnerability to a changing climate by simultaneously considering all three aspects of vulnerability (exposure, sensitivity, and resilience) using MODIS satellite data. The three elements of ecosystem vulnerability mapped in this study enable the identification of more appropriate adaptive conservation strategies by identifying the causes of vulnerability to climate change in a given region.