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Macro-scale risks of land use and climate change for tropical forests

Climate change and land use change impact tropical ecosystems severely. However, macro-scale interactions between deforestation, climate change and soil degradation are poorly known, and rarely assessed adequately for combined scenarios of climate change and land use. The Amazon basin provides a case study to investigate which interactions between landscape units (especially between inundation forests and the river system itself) are relevant to define the stability of the systems as a whole, for the carbon balances of the region as well for the sustainable use of the resources. Non-linear effects of landscape fragmentation on disturbance regime are covered for the first-time in a broad-scale ecosystem model. If funding can be secured, tropical wetlands and tropical forests elsewhere will be included at a later stage.

Staff involved Planned products Cooperation External funding
Wolfgang Cramer
Fanny Langerwisch
Ben Poulter
Anja Rammig
Kirsten Thonicke
Katrin Vohland
  • stability assessment of Amazon rainforest ecosystems to combined land use / climate change - 2010
  • disturbance dynamics module for LPJmL in tropical forests - 2009
  • closed carbon balance assessment land-river-ocean - 2009
INPA
IFM-Geomar
RD2 (Lucht et al.)
EU (GREENCYCLES)
WGL (TRACES)
World Bank (Lucht)