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. 2006 Jul 25:1:6.
doi: 10.1186/1750-0680-1-6.

Terrestrial vegetation redistribution and carbon balance under climate change

Wolfgang Lucht  1 , Sibyll Schaphoff, Tim Erbrecht, Ursula Heyder, Wolfgang Cramer
Affiliations

Terrestrial vegetation redistribution and carbon balance under climate change

Wolfgang Lucht et al. Carbon Balance Manag. .

Abstract

Background: Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) compute the terrestrial carbon balance as well as the transient spatial distribution of vegetation. We study two scenarios of moderate and strong climate change (2.9 K and 5.3 K temperature increase over present) to investigate the spatial redistribution of major vegetation types and their carbon balance in the year 2100.

Results: The world's land vegetation will be more deciduous than at present, and contain about 125 billion tons of additional carbon. While a recession of the boreal forest is simulated in some areas, along with a general expansion to the north, we do not observe a reported collapse of the central Amazonian rain forest. Rather, a decrease of biomass and a change of vegetation type occurs in its northeastern part. The ability of the terrestrial biosphere to sequester carbon from the atmosphere declines strongly in the second half of the 21st century.

Conclusion: Climate change will cause widespread shifts in the distribution of major vegetation functional types on all continents by the year 2100.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Changes in global vegetation distribution between 2100 and 2000. Simulated changes 2100–2000 of the fractional cover of deciduous woody (top), evergreen woody (middle) and non-woody (bottom) vegetation functional types for a moderate (SRES-B1, normalised to 1961–90 observed CRU dataset means, Echam5 climate change simulations) and a strong climate change scenario (SRES-A2, normalised to 1961–90 observed CRU dataset means, HadCM3 climate change simulations). Simulations with the LPJ-DGVM.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Changes in global vegetation and soil carbon content between 2100 and 2000. Simulated changes 2100–2000 in vegetation (top), soil (including litter), and total (bottom) carbon content for the two climate change scenarios (see caption of Fig. 1). Simulations with the LPJ-DGVM.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Temporal evolution of net ecosystem exchange. Simulated temporal evolution of net land surface carbon exchange (net primary production – soil respiration – fire emissions) for the two climate change scenarios (see caption of Fig. 1). Simulations with the LPJ-DGVM. Negative values denote a carbon sink.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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