A research team led by Washington State University has found that while drylands around the world will expand at an accelerated rate because of future climate change, their average productivity will likely be reduced.
A research team led by Washington State University has found that while drylands around the world will expand at an accelerated rate because of future climate change, their average productivity will likely be reduced.
The study, published in Nature Communications on April 3, is the first to quantify the impact of accelerated dryland expansion under future climate change on their gross primary production. Drylands, which primarily include savannas, grasslands and shrublands, are important for supporting grazing and non-irrigated croplands around the world. They are also an important player in the global carbon cycle and make up 41% of Earth’s land surface and support 38% of its population.
“Our results highlight the vulnerability of drylands to more frequent and severe climate extremes,” said Jingyu Yao, a research assistant in WSU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and lead author on the paper.
Using satellite data of vegetation productivity, measurements of carbon cycling from 13 sites and datasets from global models of future climate change, the researchers found that productivity of drylands will increase overall by about 12% by 2100 compared to a baseline from about 10 years ago. However, as drylands replace more productive ecosystems, overall global productivity may not increase. Furthermore, due to expected changes in precipitation and temperatures, the amount of productivity in any one dryland area will decrease.
Read more at Washington State University
Image Credit: Washington State University
