Protected areas’ role in climate-change mitigation

Melillo, J.M. and Lu, X. and David W. Kicklighter, D.W. and John M. Reilly, J.M. and etl, . (2016) Protected areas’ role in climate-change mitigation. Ambio, 45 (2). pp. 133-145.

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Abstract

Globally, 15.5 million km2 of land are currently identified as protected areas, which provide society with many ecosystem services including climate-change mitigation. Combining a global database of protected areas, a reconstruction of global land-use history, and a global biogeochemistry model, we estimate that protected areas currently sequester 0.5 Pg C annually, which is about one fifth of the carbon sequestered by all land ecosystems annually. Using an integrated earth systems model to generate climate and land-use scenarios for the twenty-first century, we project that rapid climate change, similar to high-end projections in IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, would cause the annual carbon sequestration rate in protected areas to drop to about 0.3 Pg C by 2100. For the scenario with both rapid climate change and extensive landuse change driven by population and economic pressures, 5.6 million km2 of protected areas would be converted to other uses, and carbon sequestration in the remaining protected areas would drop to near zero by 2100.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Protected areas, Global carbon cycle, Carbon sequestration, Mitigation, Climatechange
Subjects: Atmosperic Science > Climatology
Divisions: General
Depositing User: Mr T L Gautham
Date Deposited: 09 Aug 2018 10:56
Last Modified: 09 Aug 2018 10:57
URI: http://eprints.icrisat.ac.in/id/eprint/15552

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