文章基本信息

标题：Committed changes in tropical tree cover under the projected 21st century climate change
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作者：Zhenzhong Zeng ; Shilong Piao ; Anping Chen 等
期刊名称：Scientific Reports
电子版ISSN：2045-2322
出版年度：2013
卷号：3
期号：1
DOI：10.1038/srep01951
语种：English
出版社：Springer Nature
摘要：Warming and drought pose a serious threat to tropical forest. Yet the extent of this threat is uncertain, given the lack of methods to evaluate the forest tree cover changes under future climate predicted by complex dynamic vegetation models. Here we develop an empirical approach based on the observed climate space of tropical trees to estimate the maximum potential tropical tree cover (MPTC) in equilibrium with a given climate. We show that compared to present-day (2000–2009) conditions, MPTC will be reduced by 1 to 15% in the tropical band under equilibrium future (2090–2099) climate conditions predicted by 19 IPCC climate models. Tropical forests are found to regress or disappear mainly in the current transition zones between forest and savanna ecosystems. This climate pressure on tropical forests, added to human-caused land use pressure, poses a grand challenge to the sustainability of the world's largest biomass carbon pool.