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Bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity

Climate and land-use change interactively affect biodiversity. Large-scale expansions of bioenergy have been suggested as an important component for climate change mitigation. Here we use harmonized climate and land-use projections to investigate their potential combined impacts on global vertebrate...

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Autores principales: Hof, Christian, Voskamp, Alke, Biber, Matthias F., Böhning-Gaese, Katrin, Engelhardt, Eva Katharina, Niamir, Aidin, Willis, Stephen G., Hickler, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6310845/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30530689
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1807745115
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author Hof, Christian
Voskamp, Alke
Biber, Matthias F.
Böhning-Gaese, Katrin
Engelhardt, Eva Katharina
Niamir, Aidin
Willis, Stephen G.
Hickler, Thomas
author_facet Hof, Christian
Voskamp, Alke
Biber, Matthias F.
Böhning-Gaese, Katrin
Engelhardt, Eva Katharina
Niamir, Aidin
Willis, Stephen G.
Hickler, Thomas
author_sort Hof, Christian
collection PubMed
description Climate and land-use change interactively affect biodiversity. Large-scale expansions of bioenergy have been suggested as an important component for climate change mitigation. Here we use harmonized climate and land-use projections to investigate their potential combined impacts on global vertebrate diversity under a low- and a high-level emission scenario. We combine climate-based species distribution models for the world’s amphibians, birds, and mammals with land-use change simulations and identify areas threatened by both climate and land-use change in the future. The combined projected effects of climate and land-use change on vertebrate diversity are similar under the two scenarios, with land-use change effects being stronger under the low- and climate change effects under the high-emission scenario. Under the low-emission scenario, increases in bioenergy cropland may cause severe impacts in biodiversity that are not compensated by lower climate change impacts. Under this low-emission scenario, larger proportions of species distributions and a higher number of small-range species may become impacted by the combination of land-use and climate change than under the high-emission scenario, largely a result of bioenergy cropland expansion. Our findings highlight the need to carefully consider both climate and land-use change when projecting biodiversity impacts. We show that biodiversity is likely to suffer severely if bioenergy cropland expansion remains a major component of climate change mitigation strategies. Our study calls for an immediate and significant reduction in energy consumption for the benefit of both biodiversity and to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.
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spelling pubmed-63108452019-01-04 Bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity Hof, Christian Voskamp, Alke Biber, Matthias F. Böhning-Gaese, Katrin Engelhardt, Eva Katharina Niamir, Aidin Willis, Stephen G. Hickler, Thomas Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences Climate and land-use change interactively affect biodiversity. Large-scale expansions of bioenergy have been suggested as an important component for climate change mitigation. Here we use harmonized climate and land-use projections to investigate their potential combined impacts on global vertebrate diversity under a low- and a high-level emission scenario. We combine climate-based species distribution models for the world’s amphibians, birds, and mammals with land-use change simulations and identify areas threatened by both climate and land-use change in the future. The combined projected effects of climate and land-use change on vertebrate diversity are similar under the two scenarios, with land-use change effects being stronger under the low- and climate change effects under the high-emission scenario. Under the low-emission scenario, increases in bioenergy cropland may cause severe impacts in biodiversity that are not compensated by lower climate change impacts. Under this low-emission scenario, larger proportions of species distributions and a higher number of small-range species may become impacted by the combination of land-use and climate change than under the high-emission scenario, largely a result of bioenergy cropland expansion. Our findings highlight the need to carefully consider both climate and land-use change when projecting biodiversity impacts. We show that biodiversity is likely to suffer severely if bioenergy cropland expansion remains a major component of climate change mitigation strategies. Our study calls for an immediate and significant reduction in energy consumption for the benefit of both biodiversity and to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. National Academy of Sciences 2018-12-26 2018-12-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6310845/ /pubmed/30530689 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1807745115 Text en Copyright © 2018 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Biological Sciences
Hof, Christian
Voskamp, Alke
Biber, Matthias F.
Böhning-Gaese, Katrin
Engelhardt, Eva Katharina
Niamir, Aidin
Willis, Stephen G.
Hickler, Thomas
Bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity
title Bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity
title_full Bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity
title_fullStr Bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity
title_full_unstemmed Bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity
title_short Bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity
title_sort bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity
topic Biological Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6310845/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30530689
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1807745115
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