George C. Hurtt | Search USGS

USGS2020

Pervasive shifts in forest dynamics in a changing world

Forest dynamics arise from the interplay of environmental drivers and disturbances with the demographic processes of recruitment, growth, and mortality, subsequently driving biomass and species composition. However, forest disturbances and subsequent recovery are shifting with global changes in climate and land use, altering these dynamics. Changes in environmental drivers, land use, and disturbance regimes are forcing forests toward younger, shorter stands. Rising carbon dioxide, acclimation, adaptation, and migration can influence these impacts. Recent developments in Earth system models support increasingly realistic simulations of vegetation dynamics. In parallel, emerging remote sensing datasets promise qualitatively new and more abundant data on the underlying processes and consequences for vegetation structure. When combined, these advances hold promise for improving the scientific understanding of changes in vegetation demographics and disturbances.

Science↗

USGS2009

Carbon cycling under 300 years of land use change: importance of the secondary vegetation sink

We have developed a dynamic land model (LM3V) able to simulate ecosystem dynamics and exchanges of water, energy, and CO 2 between land and atmosphere. LM3V is specifically designed to address the consequences of land use and land management changes including cropland and pasture dynamics, shifting cultivation, logging, fire, and resulting patterns of secondary regrowth. Here we analyze the behavior of LM3V, forced with the output from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) atmospheric model AM2, observed precipitation data, and four historic scenarios of land use change for 1700-2000. Our analysis suggests a net terrestrial carbon source due to land use activities from 1.1 to 1.3 GtC/a during the 1990s, where the range is due to the difference in the historic cropland distribution. This magnitude is substantially smaller than previous estimates from other models, largely due to our estimates of a secondary vegetation sink of 0.35 to 0.6 GtC/a in the 1990s and decelerating agricultural land clearing since the 1960s. For the 1990s, our estimates for the pastures' carbon flux vary from a source of 0.37 to a sink of 0.15 GtC/a, and for the croplands our model shows a carbon source of 0.6 to 0.9 GtC/a. Our process-based model suggests a smaller net deforestation source than earlier bookkeeping models because it accounts for decelerated net conversion of primary forest to agriculture and for stronger secondary vegetation regrowth in tropical regions. The overall uncertainty is likely to be higher than the range reported here because of uncertainty in the biomass recovery under changing ambient conditions, including atmospheric CO 2 concentration, nutrients availability, and climate. Copyright 2009 by the American Geophysical Union.

Global Biogeochemical Cycles↗