* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Download Global Climate Change AND Tropical Forest Ecosystems Andes
Climatic Research Unit email controversy wikipedia , lookup
Soon and Baliunas controversy wikipedia , lookup
2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference wikipedia , lookup
Heaven and Earth (book) wikipedia , lookup
Climate resilience wikipedia , lookup
ExxonMobil climate change controversy wikipedia , lookup
Fred Singer wikipedia , lookup
Global warming controversy wikipedia , lookup
Climate engineering wikipedia , lookup
Climatic Research Unit documents wikipedia , lookup
Climate change denial wikipedia , lookup
Global warming hiatus wikipedia , lookup
Climate sensitivity wikipedia , lookup
Citizens' Climate Lobby wikipedia , lookup
General circulation model wikipedia , lookup
Instrumental temperature record wikipedia , lookup
Climate change adaptation wikipedia , lookup
Economics of global warming wikipedia , lookup
Climate governance wikipedia , lookup
Global warming wikipedia , lookup
Climate change in Tuvalu wikipedia , lookup
Politics of global warming wikipedia , lookup
Effects of global warming on human health wikipedia , lookup
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme wikipedia , lookup
Climate change and agriculture wikipedia , lookup
Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment wikipedia , lookup
Solar radiation management wikipedia , lookup
Attribution of recent climate change wikipedia , lookup
Climate change in Saskatchewan wikipedia , lookup
Media coverage of global warming wikipedia , lookup
Climate change feedback wikipedia , lookup
Reforestation wikipedia , lookup
Effects of global warming wikipedia , lookup
Climate change in the United States wikipedia , lookup
Scientific opinion on climate change wikipedia , lookup
Climate change and poverty wikipedia , lookup
Effects of global warming on humans wikipedia , lookup
Public opinion on global warming wikipedia , lookup
Surveys of scientists' views on climate change wikipedia , lookup
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE AND TROPICAL FOREST ECOSYSTEMS Andes Hamuraby Rozak Cibodas Botanic Gardens – Indonesian Institute of Sciences Jl. Kebun Raya Cibodas, Cipanas, Cianjur, West Java 43253 Indonesia (phone: +62-263-520448; fax: +62-263-512233) e-mail: [email protected] Key words: Climate change, biodiversity, tropical forest ecosystems Article type Scientific Review Word count abstract 105 Word count main text 1310 Number of references 18 Number of tables Number of figures 2 ABSTRACT In the last 100 years, the global mean temperature has increased approximately 0.6 oC and predicted will increase approximately 1.1oC to 6.4oC in the last 21st century. This global climate change phenomenon in physical dimension has been analyzed in detail but still poorly understood its effect to the changes of biodiversity particularly in tropics. In this paper, I discussed brief review about climate change, current status of forest ecosystems, and the effect of global climate change particularly for tropical forest ecosystems. Furthermore, in the last part, I discussed brief review about the reverse effect which is the effect of the deforestation to the regional climate change. Keywords: Climate change, biodiversity, tropical forest ecosystems INTRODUCTION Global climate change is now a well-known complex phenomenon and is often discussed with a view to mitigating the effects of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Although the physical dimensions have been analyzed in detail, the effect of global climate change on biodiversity, particularly in the tropics, are poorly understood (Meynecke, 2004). The evidence for biotic responses to global climate change is clear for high latitudes but sparse and controversial for tropical latitudes (Wright, 2005). For instance, the study of Pompe et al. (2008) showed that climate change impacts on plant distribution in Germany. The effect of climatic change on tropical vegetation becomes global and regional concern because of the high biodiversity and the potential feedback to the carbon, water, and nutrient cycles (Ostendorf et al., 2001). Tropical forests is one of the tropical vegetation that already facing threats from deforestation, fragmentation and habitat degradation (Giam et al., 2010). They are likely to encounter further challenges from the ongoing and impending changes in climate. Although the role of tropical forests as both sinks and sources of CO2 has been well recognized, less is known about the impact of climate change on tropical biotas (Bawa & Markham, 1995). Tropical forests are among the biologically richest ecosystems on Earth, but are being rapidly degraded and destroyed by habitat conversion (Myers et al., 2000). These forests are also vulnerable to global warming and other large-scale environmental change, but much uncertainty exists about the nature and magnitude of these anthropogenic impacts in tropical forest organisms (Laurance et al., 2011). CURRENT STATUS OF FOREST ECOSYSTEMS FAO (2006) and IPCC (2007a) reported that the global forest cover is 3,952 million hectares, which is about 30 percent of the world’s land area (Figure 1a). Most relevant for the carbon cycle is that between 2000 and 2005, gross deforestation continued at a rate of 12.9 million hectares/year (Figure 1b). This is mainly as a result of converting forests to agricultural land, but also due to expansion of settlements, infrastructure, and unsustainable logging practices. In the 1990s, gross deforestation was slightly higher, at 13.1 million hectares/year. Due to afforestation, landscape restoration and natural expansion of forests, the most recent estimate of net loss of forest is 7.3 million hectares/year. The loss is still largest in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. This net loss was less than that of 8.9 million hectares/year in the 1990s. GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer (IPCC, 2007b). Over the past 100 year, the global average temperature has increased by approximately 0.6oC and is projected to continue to rise at a rapid rate (Root et al., 2003). IPCC (2007b) was reported the projection of the average surface temperature in six different scenarios (B1, B2, A1B, A1T, A2, and A1FI). The lowest future emissions trajectory scenario (B1) predicted that the surface temperature will increase 1.8oC (1.1oC to 2.9oC) in 2100, meanwhile, the highest future emissions trajectory scenario (A1FI) predicted that the surface temperature will increase 4.0oC (2.4oC to 6.4oC) in 2100 (Figure 2). It means that by the end of the 21st century, large portions of the Earth’s surface may experience climates not found at present and some 20th century climates may disappear (Root et al., 2003). CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS TO FOREST ECOSYSTEMS Climate is one of the primary constraints on species distributions and ecosystem function and Ecologists are faced with the challenge of forecasting species range shifts, extinction risks, biome shifts, altered disturbance regimes, biogeochemical cycling, and other ecological responses to climate change (Williams et al., 2007). Simulation study in order to investigate the response of vegetation to global warming and rainfall anomalies has been done by White et al. (1999). White et al. found that there are four key changes predicted that will change in vegetation area. Those four key changes are: 1. Some areas of tropical evergreen forest in Amazonia were predicted to change to savanna, grassland or even desert by the 2080s, in response to warming of over 7 oC and decreases in rainfall of up to 500mm y-1, 2. Large areas of tropical C4 grassland (e.g. in the Sahel, India and Australia) were lost to desert by the 2080s in response to warming, increasing CO2 and decreased rainfall, or superseded by C3 grassland where rainfall increased, 3. Annual precipitation decreases of up to 200mm y-1 resulted in the conversion of large area of temperate forest to grassland or savanna in southern Europe and eastern United States, 4. Needle-leaved boreal forest extended northwards response to warming, with loss of tundra and southwards in Asia in response to increased precipitation. Another study in tropical forest located in Northern Queensland Australia has been done by Ostendorf et al. (2001). Ostendorf et al. evaluate how the spatial arrangement of forest pattern may constrain vegetation change as predicted by spatially static artificial neural network (ANN) model. The ANN model quantifies a most suitable forest type based on the conditional on the transition to the best-suited type. In that model, they evaluates the effect of the increase 10C mean annual temperature and the decrease 10% mean annual precipitation change. Depending on the strength of spatial effects included in the models, the predicted future vegetation pattern differ 1% to 10% of the study area. However, if in addition to spatial constraints ecological constraints also considered, the predictions may differ by as much as 27% showing a relatively strong dependence of prediction on assumptions about patch-level processes. Tropical montane forest ecosystems are also affected by climate change. Foster study (2001) tried to explain the negative potential impacts of climate change on tropical montane cloud forests. He argued that the cloud forest will also be affected by climate changes, in particular changes in cloud formation. A number of global climate models suggest a reduction in low level cloudiness with the coming climate changes. One site in particular, Monteverde - Costa Rica, appears to already be experiencing a reduction in cloud immersion. The coming climate changes appear very likely to upset the current equilibrium of the cloud forest. Results will include biodiversity loss, altitude shifts in species’ ranges and subsequent community reshuffling, and possibly forest death. He also mentioned that the difficulties for cloud forest species to survive in climate-induced migrations include no remaining location with suitable climate, no pristine location to colonize, migration rates or establishment rates that cannot keep up with climate change rates and new species interactions. FOREST ECOSYSTEMS EFFECTS TO REGIONAL CLIMATE CHANGES In other perspectives, million hectares of forest has been changed into unforested area caused by forest fire, illegal logging, land use changes (Flannigan et al., 2000) The deforestation of the areas is affecting the regional climates especially for the increasing of green house gasses (van der Werf et al., 2008). McGuffie et al. (1995) describes the impacts of tropical deforestation on regional climates in terms of change detected in five regions i.e. Northern Amazon, Southern Amazon, Central Amazon, Southeast Asia, and Africa. For each of these regions, seasonal distributions of three climatic variables are discussed which are the ground (or soil) surface temperature, the total precipitation and the atmospheric moisture convergence. The McGuffie’s results showed that precipitation always decreases following tropical deforestation. Although the ground surface temperature increases in southern Amazon and over Basin as a whole, the northern Amazon, Southeast Asia and Africa all exhibit decreases in ground temperatures. Then, atmospheric moisture convergence decreases in the Amazon. In contrast, the moisture convergence is increased over Southeast Asia and similar effect can be seen in Africa. These changes suggest that regional-scale circulation have been affected by tropical deforestation. If this is the case, then it is possible that locations distant from the disturbed tropics may also be affected. REFERENCES Bawa, K.S. and Markham, A., (1995). Climate change and tropical forest. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10 (9): 348-349. FAO, (2006). Global forest resources assessment 2005: Progress towards sustainable forest management. FAO Forestry Paper. 147, 350 pp. Flannigan, M.D., Stocks, B.J. and Wotton, B.M., (2000). Climate change and forest fires. The Science of the Total Environment 262: 221-229. Foster, P., (2001). The potential negative impacts of global climate change on tropical montane cloud forests. Earth-Science Reviews 55: 73-106. Giam, X., Bradshaw, C.J.A., Tan, H.T.W. and Sodhi, N.S., (2010). Future habitat loss and the conservation of plant biodiversity. Biological Conservation 143: 1594-1602. IPCC, (2007a). Climate change 2007: Mitigation of climate change (contributions of working group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). –In: Metz, B. et al. (eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. IPCC., 2007b. Climate change 2007: The physical science basis (Contributions of working group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). –In: Solomon, S. et al. (eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Laurance, W.F., Useche, D.C., Shoo, L.P., Herzog, S.K., Kessler, M., Escobar, F., Brehm, G., Axmacher, J.C., Chen, I.-C., Gamez, L.A., Hietz, P., Fiedler, K., Pyrcz, T., Wolf, J., Merkord, C.L., Cardelus, C., Marshall, A.R., Ah-Peng, C., Aplet, G.H., Arizmendi, M.D.C., Baker, W.J., Barone, J., Bruhl, C.A., Bussmann, R.W., Cicuzza, D., Eilu, G., Favila, M.E., Hemp, A., Hemp, C., Homeier, J., Hurtado, J., Jankowski, J., Kattan, G., Kluge, J., Kromer, T., Lees, D.C., Lehnert, M., Longino, J.T., Lovett, J., Martin, P.H., Patterson, B.D., Pearson, R.G., Peh, K.S.H., Richardson, B., Richardson, M., Samways, M.J., Sanbeta, F., Smith, T.B., Utteridge, T.M.A., Watkins, J.E., Wilson, R., Williams, S.E. and Thomas, C.D., (2011). Global warming, elevation ranges and the vulnerability of tropical biota. Biological Conservation 144: 548-557. Meynecke, J-O., (2004). Effects of global climate change on geographic distributions of vertebrates in North Queensland. Ecological Modelling 174: 347-357. McGuffie, K., Henderson-Sellers, A., Zhang, H., Durbidge, T.B. and Pitman, A.J., (1995). Global climate sensitivity to tropical deforestation. Global and Planetary Change 10: 97-128. Myers, N., Mittermeier, R.A., Mittermeier, C.G., da Fonseca, G.A.B. and Kent, J., (2000). Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature 403: 853-858. Ostendorf, B., Hilbert, D.W. and Hopkins, M.S., (2001). The effect of climate change on tropical rainforest vegetation pattern. Ecological Modelling 145: 211-224. Pompe, S., Hanspach, J., Badeck, F., Klotz, S., Thuiller, W. and Kuhn, I., (2008). Climate and land use change impacts on plant distributions in Germany. Global Biology Letters 4: 564-567. Root, T.L., Price, J.T., Hall, K.R., Schneider, S.H., Rosenzweig, C. and Pounds, J.A., (2003). Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants. Nature 42: 57-60. Van der Werf, G.R., Dempewolf, J., Trigg, S.N., Randerson, J.T., Kasibhatla, P.S., Giglio, L., Murdiyarso, D., Peters, W., Morton, D.C., Collatz, G.J., Dolman, A.J. and DeFries, R.S., (2008). Climate regulation of fire emissions and deforestation in equatorial Asia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (51): 20350-20355. White, A., Cannell, M.G.R. and Friend, A.D., (1999). Climate change impacts on ecosystems and the terrestrial carbon sink: a new assessment. Global Environmental Change 9: S21-S30. Williams, J.W., Jackson, S.T. and Kutzbach, J.E., (2007). Projected distributions of novel and disappearing climates by 2100 AD. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (14): 5738-5742. Wright, S.J., (2005). Tropical forests in a changing environment. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20 (10): 553-560. Figures Figure 1. (a) World’s forest area; (b) Net change in forest area between 2000 and 2005 (FAO, 2006) Figure 2. IPCC multi-model averages and assessed ranges for surface warming in six different emissions scenarios.