Indirect impacts of climate change on land-related ecosystem services include those that result from changes in human behaviour, including potential large-scale human migrations or the implementation of afforestation, reforestation or other changes in land management, which can have positive or negative outcomes on ecosystem services. While the net impacts are specific to time as well as ecosystem types and services, there is an asymmetry of risk such that overall impacts of climate change are expected to reduce ecosystem services. Climate change can also alter the mix of land-related ecosystem services, such as groundwater recharge, purification of water, and flood protection. Climate change will result in range shifts and, in some cases, extinction of species. Disruptions of ecosystem services can occur where climate change causes transitions from one biome to another, for example, forest to grassland as a result of changes in water balance or natural disturbance regimes. The direct impacts range from subtle reductions or enhancements of specific services, such as biological productivity, resulting from changes in temperature, temperature variability or rainfall, to complete disruption and elimination of services. Avoiding, reducing and reversing land degradation has a large potential to mitigate climate change and help communities to adapt to climate change.Ĭlimate change will affect land-related ecosystem services (e.g., pollination, resilience to extreme climate events, water yield, soil conservation, carbon storage, etc.) and biodiversity, both directly and indirectly. Many SLM practices (e.g., agroforestry, perennial crops, organic amendments, etc.) increase carbon content of soil and vegetation cover and hence provide both local and immediate adaptation benefits, combined with global mitigation benefits in the long term, while providing many social and economic co-benefits. Land-use change in the form of clearing of forest for rangeland and cropland (e.g., for provision of bio-fuels), and cultivation of peat soils, is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from both biomass and soils. This means that sustainable land management (SLM) becomes even more important with climate change. One important impact of climate change on land degradation is that increasing global temperatures intensify the hydrological cycle, resulting in more intense rainfall, which is an important driver of soil erosion. Climate change, land degradation and land use are linked in a complex web of causality.
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