scholarly journals Land Use and Ecological Change: A 12,000-Year History

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Erle C. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Industrial Agriculture ◽  
Ecological Change ◽  
Global Patterns ◽  
Human Use

Human use of land has been transforming Earth's ecology for millennia. From hunting and foraging to burning the land to farming to industrial agriculture, increasingly intensive human use of land has reshaped global patterns of biodiversity, ecosystems, landscapes, and climate. This review examines recent evidence from archaeology, paleoecology, environmental history, and model-based reconstructions that reveal a planet largely transformed by land use over more than 10,000 years. Although land use has always sustained human societies, its ecological consequences are diverse and sometimes opposing, both degrading and enriching soils, shrinking wild habitats and shaping novel ones, causing extinctions of some species while propagating and domesticating others, and both emitting and absorbing the greenhouse gases that cause global climate change. By transforming Earth's ecology, land use has literally paved the way for the Anthropocene. Now, a better future depends on land use strategies that can effectively sustain people together with the rest of terrestrial nature on Earth's limited land.

Global Climate Change: Real or Myth?

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael H. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
An Inconvenient Truth ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Earth’S Climate ◽  
The One

We, the teeming billions of people on earth, are changing the earth’s climate at an unprecedented rate because we are spewing out greenhouse gases and are heading to a disaster, say most climate scientists. Not so, say the skeptics. We are just experiencing normal variations in earth’s climate and we should all take a big breath, settle down, and worry about something else. Which is it? A national debate has raged for the last several decades about whether anthropogenic (man-made) sources of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and other so-called “greenhouse gases“ (primarily methane and nitrous oxide) are causing the world to heat up. This phenomenon is usually called “global warming,” but it is more appropriate to call it “global climate change,” since it is not simply an increase in global temperatures but rather more complex changes to the overall climate. Al Gore is a prominent spokesman for the theory that humans are causing an increase in greenhouse gases leading to global climate change. His movie and book, An Inconvenient Truth, gave the message widespread awareness and resulted in a Nobel Peace Prize for him in 2008. However, the message also led to widespread criticism. On the one hand are a few scientists and a large segment of the general American public who believe that there is no connection between increased CO2 in the atmosphere and global climate change, or if there is, it is too expensive to do anything about it, anyway. On the other hand is an overwhelming consensus of climate scientists who have produced enormous numbers of research papers demonstrating that increased CO2 is changing the earth’s climate. The scientific consensus is expressed most clearly in the Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 by the United Nations–sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the fourth in a series of reports since 1990. The IPCC began as a group of scientists meeting in Geneva in November 1988 to discuss global climate issues under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program.

scholarly journals La planeación territorial en municipios costeros y su importancia para la adaptación al cambio climático global

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
F.A. Rosete Vergés ◽  
Gustavo Martín Morales ◽  
M.F. Onofre Villalva
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Coastal Lagoons ◽  
Warning System ◽  
Concrete Action ◽  
Productive Systems ◽  
The Impact

The present work raises the importance of land use planning for the global climate change adaptation in coastal municipalities, in particular against the effects caused by natural hazards associated with climate change. The first part presents the current situation of the main land use planning instruments in the coastal municipalities of Mexico, in the second part the current environmental situation in said municipalities is presented, identifying the degree of their transformation, the alteration of the ecosystems in the context of watersheds, the impact on the drainage network and mangrove losses. Under these circumstances, and taking into account that the future climate scenarios indicate an increase in the intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones, most of the coastal municipalities are in a situation of very high to medium vulnerability. The third part of the text presents the concrete action that coastal municipalities can take to be more resilient in the face of the challenges posed by global climate change. These actions can be grouped into four major thematic groups: Implementation of an early warning system based on a municipal information system, conserving the first defense barrier (dunes, mangroves and coastal lagoons) against cyclones and storm tides, decrease the vulnerability of infrastructure, productive systems and population, and restoration and conservation of ecosystems with a productive approach to lessen the impact of extreme events.

Global Climate Change Opportunity as Well as Challenge to Architecture

2011 ◽  
Vol 243-249 ◽  
pp. 5289-5292
Author(s):  
Jun Hua Yu
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Save Energy ◽  
Emission Of Greenhouse Gases

As known to all, the emission of greenhouse gases is mainly caused by human activities. If we could cut down the emission, we could gradually prevent the influence of climate change. Relevant research shows that in the field of energy consumption, the control of CO2 emission is the most effective way to save energy. Thus, reducing the architectural energy consumption is one of the most crucial factors to realize global climate goals. Although more and more scholars prefer to use the word ‘dilemma’ to describe the urgent contradiction between architectural construction and environment, and energy as well, I still want to discuss the influence of global warming on the architecture industry, and explain why it is an opportunity as well.

scholarly journals Effect of Climate Change on Land Degradation

2020 ◽  
pp. 483-494
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Land Degradation ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Ecological Resources ◽  
Sequestration Potential ◽  
The Impact

Degradation currently affects 25 % of the land on Earth and 40 % of the agricultural land on Earth. Environmental effects of soil degradation are widespread, including increased soil losses, deterioration of water quality, decline of biodiversity and degradation of ecological resources and associated values, especially where actual land use is disrespectful (natural use in circumstances where land is in conflict with the environment. Changes in temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation patterns can affect the production of plant biomass, land use, land cover, soil moisture, infiltration rate, runoff and crop management, and eventually land degradation. In recent decades, powerful partnerships have been seen between global climate change and land loss processes. In order to reliably define or forecast the effect of climate change on the loss of land, models of climate change and land use models should be combined with hydrology. Until the first seventies land degradation and geological process weren't thought of a serious issue in most Mediterranean regions. Traditional agricultural systems were believed to be able to keep those processes under control. So low priority was appointed to research programmes and comes on eroding and conservation, preference being given to the impact of farm machinery on soil structure and compaction beside the role of organic matter within the soil. To regulate the destruction of soil, it is therefore important to have limited and global strategies and regulations. Land use and land cover changes influence carbon fluxes and GHGs emissions that directly alter atmospherical composition and radioactive forcing properties. Land degradation aggravates greenhouse gas-induced global climate change through the discharge of CO2 from cleared and dead vegetation and thru the reduction of the carbon sequestration potential of degraded land. The present analysis furnishes effects of climate amendment on land degradation.

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