Impact of land-use and land cover change on future climate

Eugene S. Takle
© 2005

Change in land use, say, from forest to agriculture or prairie to urban, creates important changes to the climate-important factors such as absorption and retention of heat, evaporation and transpiration of water, and retention or runoff of precipitation. Pielke (2005) summarizes some of these effects and provides an overview of a more in-depth study by Feddema et al. (2005). The latter paper reports results of experiments with a global climate model run with future scenario emissions of greenhouse gases and with substantially different projected changes in land-use for the 21st century. They find large regional differences in climate due to the impact of different land-use scenarios. Some effects are local -- local change from forest to crops increases temperature -- but some are more subtle because they result from "teleconnections" of land-use changes some large distance away but whose effect is mediated at large distances due to changes in large-scale atmospheric circulations. The conclusion of the paper is that land-use should be considered along with changes in greenhouse gases for more accurate simulation of future climates.

References

Pielke, R.A., Sr., 2005: Land use and climate change. Science, 310, 1625-1626.

Feddema, J.J., K.W. Oleson, G.B. Bonan. L.O. Mearns., L.E. Buja, G.A. Meehl., and W.M. Washington, 2005: The importance of land-cover change in simulating future climates. Science, 310, 1674-1678.