Projecting impacts of global climate and land‐use scenarios on plant biodiversity
Nations have committed to ambitious conservation targets in response to accelerating rates of global biodiversity loss, and anticipating future impacts is essential to inform policy decisions for achieving these targets.
As part of the intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models of the IPBES, we derive a fine‐resolution assessment of trends in the persistence of global plant biodiversity. Our goal is to estimate the impact of land-use change and global change under alternative socio-economic scenarios.
We estimate the number of species committed to extinction has increased by 60% globally during the 20th century, and is projected to further increase under more intensive land‐use change scenarios. Alarmingly, the additional impact from climate change might largely surpass that of land use. Sustainable land‐use planning might not be sufficient to prevent biodiversity loss, without a stabilization of climate to pre‐industrial times.
What's going on:
- May '19 Publication of a paper on scenarios of plant biodiversity under global change
- Nov '18 Publication of a paper that lays out the protocol for the model intercomparison exercise
- Jan '18 Meeting in Cambridge to discuss preliminary results from each group
- Sept '17 Our work starts as part of the intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models of the
IPBES