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80% of rainforests could adversely impacted by logging, deforestation, climate change by 2100 mongabay.com August 05, 2010 Researchers led by Greg Asner at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University projected future vegetation change based on integrating high resolution deforestation and logging maps with 16 different global climate models. They found that by 2100 up to 81 percent of the Amazon could be susceptible to rapid vegetation change due to a combination of climate impacts and land use. Logging and climate change could affect up to 74 percent of Congo basin forests by the end of the century, while up to percent of Asia-Pacific's tropical forests could be impacted. Land use, rather than climate, is predicted to be a bigger driver of biodiversity loss in Asia, according to the study.
He added that the results could be used to help prioritize conservation strategies to minimize biodiversity loss. "For those areas of the globe projected to suffer most from climate change, land managers could focus their efforts on reducing the pressure from deforestation, thereby helping species adjust to climate change, or enhancing their ability to move in time to keep pace with it. On the flip side, regions of the world where deforestation is projected to have fewer effects from climate change could be targeted for restoration." Earlier work by Asner and colleagues has found that selective logging affects roughly 20 times the area that is deforested each year in the tropics. Logging increases the susceptibility of forests to fire and future conversion. CITATION: Gregory P. Asner, Scott R. Loarie, and Ursula Heyder. Combined effects of climate and land-use change on the future of humid tropical forests. Conservation Letters, August 5, 2010.
Tags: forests deforestation logging amazon impact of climate change climate change congo rainforests remote sensing Satellite Imagery Climate Modeling conservation green environment biodiversity Environmental news index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home Advertisements:
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