Drivers of recent forest cover change in southern South America are linked to climate and CO2

and background Widespread changes in forest structure and distribution have been documented in northern Patagonia over the past century. We employed LPJ-GUESS, a dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) to investigate the role of climate, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), and fire on simulated fores...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Landscape ecology 2021-12, Vol.36 (12), p.3591-3606
Main Authors: Ogunkoya, Ayodele, Kaplan, Jed, Whitlock, Cathy, Nanavati, William, Roberts, David W., Poulter, Benjamin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biomass
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Carbon dioxide
Climate change
Drought
Ecology
Environmental Management
Fertilization
Forests
Landscape Ecology
Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning
Life Sciences
Nature Conservation
Net Primary Productivity
Normalized difference vegetative index
Primary production
Remote sensing
Research Article
Simulation
Sustainable Development
Vegetation
Vegetation index
Water use
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Summary:and background Widespread changes in forest structure and distribution have been documented in northern Patagonia over the past century. We employed LPJ-GUESS, a dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) to investigate the role of climate, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), and fire on simulated forest cover during the twentieth century. Our objective was to assess the drivers responsible for forest change to temperature, precipitation, radiation, fire and atmospheric CO 2 Results Simulations using observed changes in climate and CO 2 from 1930 to 2010, showed an increase in forest cover under changing climate and CO 2 , because of higher carbon assimilation and net primary production. The model results were compared with a remote-sensing-derived biomass map and ‘greening’ indices from the normalized difference vegetation index. Model simulations and satellite data both show increased greening at high and low elevations. In contrast, simulations using pre-industrial climate and CO 2 conditions resulted in a decrease in fire frequency and lower simulated biomass than is reflected by present-day vegetation. Conclusion Our simulations shows that climate is the primary driver and CO 2 fertilization is the secondary driver of forest expansion in northern Patagonia. We suggest that rising CO 2 mitigates climate-induced drought stress due to increases in water-use efficiency.
ISSN:0921-2973
1572-9761
DOI:10.1007/s10980-021-01330-7