Climate change and intensive land use reduce soil animal biomass through dissimilar pathways

AbstractGlobal change drivers, such as climate and land use, may profoundly influence body size, density, and biomass of organisms. It is still poorly understood how these concurrent drivers interact in affecting ecological communities. We present results of an experimental field study assessing the interactive effects of climate change and land-use intensification on body size, density, and biomass of soil microarthropods. We found that both climate change and intensive land use decreased their total biomass. Strikingly, this reduction was realized via two dissimilar pathways: climate change reduced mean body size, while intensive land use decreased population size. These findings highlight that two of the most pervasive global change drivers operate via different pathways when decreasing soil animal biomass. These shifts in soil communities may threaten essential ecosystem functions like organic matter turnover and nutrient cycling in future ecosystems.SignificanceMany important ecosystem functions are determined by the biomass of soil animal, however, how their biomass may respond to climate change and land-use intensification still remains unknown. We conducted a large field study to investigate the potential interaction between these two pervasive global change drivers, and disentangle the pathways where they contribute to the changes in soil animal biomass. Our findings are exceptionally novel by showing detrimental, but largely independent, effects of climate change and land-use intensity on soil animal biomass, and that these independent effects can be explained by two dissimilar pathways: climate change reduced mean body size, while intensive land use decreased population size. Notably, consistent climate change effects under different land-use regimes suggest that (1) the identified pathways may apply to a wide range of environmental conditions, and (2) current extensive land-use regimes do not mitigate detrimental climate change effects on ecosystems.

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Climate change and intensive land use reduce soil animal biomass via dissimilar pathways

eLife ◽

10.7554/elife.54749 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

Author(s):

Rui Yin ◽

Julia Siebert ◽

Nico Eisenhauer ◽

Martin Schädler

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Body Size ◽

Global Change ◽

Ecosystem Functions ◽

Total Biomass ◽

Soil Animal ◽

Soil Microarthropods ◽

Density And Biomass ◽

Intensive Land Use

Global change drivers, such as climate change and land use, may profoundly influence body size, density, and biomass of soil organisms. However, it is still unclear how these concurrent drivers interact in affecting ecological communities. Here, we present the results of an experimental field study assessing the interactive effects of climate change and land-use intensification on body size, density, and biomass of soil microarthropods. We found that the projected climate change and intensive land use decreased their total biomass. Strikingly, this reduction was realized via two dissimilar pathways: climate change reduced mean body size and intensive land use decreased density. These findings highlight that two of the most pervasive global change drivers operate via different pathways when decreasing soil animal biomass. These shifts in soil communities may threaten essential ecosystem functions like organic matter turnover and nutrient cycling in future ecosystems.

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Decision letter: Climate change and intensive land use reduce soil animal biomass via dissimilar pathways

10.7554/elife.54749.sa1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Eva Knop

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Soil Animal ◽

Intensive Land Use

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Author response: Climate change and intensive land use reduce soil animal biomass via dissimilar pathways

10.7554/elife.54749.sa2 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Rui Yin ◽

Julia Siebert ◽

Nico Eisenhauer ◽

Martin Schädler

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Author Response ◽

Soil Animal ◽

Intensive Land Use

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Future effects of climate and land-use change on terrestrial vertebrate community diversity under different scenarios

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2018.0792 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 285 (1881) ◽

pp. 20180792 ◽

Cited By ~ 64

Author(s):

Tim Newbold

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Land Use Change ◽

Community Diversity ◽

Ecosystem Functions ◽

Combined Effects ◽

Climate Change Effects ◽

Terrestrial Vertebrate ◽

Data Limitations ◽

Business As Usual

Land-use and climate change are among the greatest threats facing biodiversity, but understanding their combined effects has been hampered by modelling and data limitations, resulting in part from the very different scales at which land-use and climate processes operate. I combine two different modelling paradigms to predict the separate and combined (additive) effects of climate and land-use change on terrestrial vertebrate communities under four different scenarios. I predict that climate-change effects are likely to become a major pressure on biodiversity in the coming decades, probably matching or exceeding the effects of land-use change by 2070. The combined effects of both pressures are predicted to lead to an average cumulative loss of 37.9% of species from vertebrate communities under ‘business as usual’ (uncertainty ranging from 15.7% to 54.2%). Areas that are predicted to experience the effects of both pressures are concentrated in tropical grasslands and savannahs. The results have important implications for the conservation of biodiversity in future, and for the ability of biodiversity to support important ecosystem functions, upon which humans rely.

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Soil functional biodiversity and biological quality under threat: Intensive land use outweighs climate change

Soil Biology and Biochemistry ◽

10.1016/j.soilbio.2020.107847 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 147 ◽

pp. 107847 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Rui Yin ◽

Paul Kardol ◽

Madhav P. Thakur ◽

Iwona Gruss ◽

Gao-Lin Wu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Functional Biodiversity ◽

Biological Quality ◽

Intensive Land Use

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Modelling landslide hazard under global change: the case of a Pyrenean valley

10.5194/nhess-2019-311 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Séverine Bernardie ◽

Rosalie Vandromme ◽

Yannick Thiery ◽

Thomas Houet ◽

Marine Grémont ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Global Change ◽

Land Cover ◽

Slope Stability ◽

Landslide Hazard ◽

Forest Growth ◽

Global Changes ◽

Rcp 8.5 ◽

Socioeconomic Scenarios

Abstract. Several studies have shown that global changes have important impacts in mountainous areas, since they affect natural hazards induced by hydro-meteorological events such as landslides. To estimate the capacity of mountainous valleys to cope with landslide hazard under global change (climate change as well as climate- and human-induced land use change), it is necessary to evaluate the evolution of the different components that define this type of hazard: topography, geology and geotechnics, hydrogeology and land cover. The present study evaluates, through an innovative methodology, the influence of both vegetation cover and climate change on landslide hazard in a Pyrenean valley from the present to 2100. Once the invariant features of the studied area, such as geology and topography, were set, we first focused on assessing future land use changes through the construction of four prospective socioeconomic scenarios and their projection to 2040 and 2100. These inputs were then used to spatially model land use and land cover (LUCC) information to produce multi-temporal LUCC maps. Then, climate change inputs were used to extract the water saturation of the uppermost layers, according to two greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. The impacts of land use and climate change based on these scenarios were then used to modulate the hydro-mechanical model to compute the factor of safety (FoS) and the hazard levels over the considered area. The results demonstrate the influence of land use on slope stability through the presence and type of forest. The resulting changes are significant despite being small and dependent on future land use linked to the socioeconomic scenarios. In particular, a reduction in human activity results in an increase in slope stability; in contrast, an increase in anthropic activity leads to an opposite evolution in the region, with some reduction in slope stability. Climate change may also have a significant impact in some areas because of the increase in the soil water content; the results indicate a reduction in the FoS in a large part of the study area, depending on the landslide typology considered. Therefore, even if future forest growth leads to slope stabilization, the evolution of the groundwater conditions will lead to destabilization. These changes are not uniform over the area and are particularly significant under the most extreme climate scenario, RCP 8.5. Compared to the current period, the size of the area that is prone to deep landslides is higher in the future than the area prone to small landslides (both rotational and translational). On the other hand, the increase rate of areas prone to landslides is higher for the small landslide typology than for the deep landslide typology. Interestingly, the evolution of extreme events is related to the frequency of the highest water filling ratio. The results indicate that the occurrences of landslide hazards in the near future (2021–2050 period, scenario RCP 8.5) and far future (2071–2100 period, scenario RCP 8.5) are expected to increase by factors of 1.5 and 4, respectively.

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CLIMATE CHANGE AND FUTURE LAND USE IN THE UNITED STATES: AN ECONOMIC APPROACH

Climate Change Economics ◽

10.1142/s2010007811000218 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 02 (01) ◽

pp. 27-51 ◽

Cited By ~ 26

Author(s):

DAVID HAIM ◽

RALPH J. ALIG ◽

ANDREW J. PLANTINGA ◽

BRENT SOHNGEN

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

United States ◽

Land Use ◽

Land Use Change ◽

Land Use Changes ◽

The United States ◽

Land Use Patterns ◽

Cropland Area ◽

Climate Change Effects ◽

Net Returns

An econometric land-use model is used to project regional and national land-use changes in the United States under two IPCC emissions scenarios. The key driver of land-use change in the model is county-level measures of net returns to five major land uses. The net returns are modified for the IPCC scenarios according to assumed trends in population and income and projections from integrated assessment models of agricultural prices and agricultural and forestry yields. For both scenarios, we project large increases in urban land by the middle of the century, while the largest declines are in cropland area. Significant differences among regions in the projected patterns of land-use change are evident, including an expansion of forests in the Mountain and Plains regions with declines elsewhere. Comparisons to projections with no climate change effects on prices and yields reveal relatively small differences. Thus, our findings suggest that future land-use patterns in the U.S. will be shaped largely by urbanization, with climate change having a relatively small influence.

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Land use and climate change effects on runoff in the upper Urumqi River watershed: a SWAT model based analysis

Acta Ecologica Sinica ◽

10.5846/stxb201704190699 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 38 (14) ◽

Author(s):

祖拜代·木依布拉 ZUBAIDA·Muyibul ◽

师庆东 SHI Qingdong ◽

普拉提·莫合塔尔 POLAT·Muhtar ◽

张润 ZHANG Run

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Swat Model ◽

River Watershed ◽

Climate Change Effects ◽

Model Based ◽

Model Based Analysis

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Comprehensive Assessment of the Effect of Urban Built-Up Land Expansion and Climate Change on Net Primary Productivity

Complexity ◽

10.1155/2020/8489025 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2020 ◽

pp. 1-12 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Pengyan Zhang ◽

Yanyan Li ◽

Wenlong Jing ◽

Dan Yang ◽

Yu Zhang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Land Use Change ◽

Primary Productivity ◽

Net Primary Productivity ◽

Urban Expansion ◽

Ecosystem Functions ◽

Rapid Urbanization ◽

Important Indicator ◽

The Impact

Urbanization is causing profound changes in ecosystem functions at local and regional scales. The net primary productivity (NPP) is an important indicator of global change, rapid urbanization and climate change will have a significant impact on NPP, and urban expansion and climate change in different regions have different impacts on NPP, especially in densely populated areas. However, to date, efforts to quantify urban expansion and climate change have been limited, and the impact of long-term continuous changes in NPP has not been well understood. Based on land use data, night light data, NPP data, climate data, and a series of social and economic data, we performed a comprehensive analysis of land use change in terms of type and intensity and explored the pattern of urban expansion and its relationship with NPP and climate change for the period of 2000–2015, taking Zhengzhou, China, as an example. The results show that the major form of land use change was cropland to built-up land during the 2000–2015 period, with a total area of 367.51 km2 converted. The NPP exhibited a generally increasing trend in the study area except for built-up land and water area. The average correlation coefficients between temperature and NPP and precipitation and NPP were 0.267 and 0.020, respectively, indicating that an increase in temperature and precipitation can promote NPP despite significant spatial differences. During the examined period, most expansion areas exhibited an increasing NPP trend, indicating that the influence of urban expansion on NPP is mainly characterized by an evident influence of the expansion area. The study can provide a reference for Zhengzhou and even the world's practical research to improve land use efficiency, increase agricultural productivity and natural carbon sinks, and maintain low-carbon development.

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