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| Titel |
Current state and prospects of carbon management in high latitudes of Northern Eurasia |
| VerfasserIn |
Dmitry Schepaschenko, Anatoly Shvidenko |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2010
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 12 (2010) |
| Datensatznummer |
250042598
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The current state and trajectories of future development of natural landscapes in high latitudes
of Northern Eurasia are defined inter alia by (1) current unsatisfactory social and economic
situation in boreal Northern Eurasia; (2) the dramatic magnitude of on-going and expected
climatic change (warming up to 10-12oC under global warming at 4oC); (3) increasing
anthropogenic pressure, particularly in regions of intensive oil and gas exploration and
extraction; (4) large areas of sparsely populated and practically unmanaged land;
(5) vulnerability of northern ecosystems which historically developed under cold
climates and buffering capacity of which is not well known; (6) risk of catastrophic
natural disturbances (fire, insect outbreaks) whose frequency and severity have
accelerated during recent decades; and (7) high probability of irreversible changes
of vegetation cover. These specifics are overlapped with insufficient governance
of natural renewable resources (e.g., forests) and destructed practice of industrial
development of new territories (oil and gas extraction and exploration, metallurgy
etc.).
Based on a full carbon account for terrestrial vegetation ecosystems of Northern Eurasia,
we analyze the relative impacts of major drivers on magnitude and uncertainty of the Net
Ecosystem Carbon Balance (NECB) under current and expected climate and environment.
Dynamic trends and interannual variability of NECB are mostly dependent on weather
conditions during growth seasons of individual years, regimes of natural disturbances, and
anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems. In a short term, disturbances and human impacts cause
a theoretically “manageable” part of the full carbon account, which on average is
estimated to be of about 20% of annual net primary production. In a long term,
thawing of permafrost and change of hydrological regimes of vast territories may
result in a catastrophic decline of the forested area and wide distribution of “green
desertification”.
The paradigm of sustainable forest management (SFM) is a cornerstone of integrated
landscape management in boreal regions and a basic prerequisite of proper management of
the terrestrial carbon cycle. Basic drivers which generate major threats for terrestrial
ecosystems and particularly for forests are increasing aridity of climate over major part of
Asian Russia (the trend already clearly observed during the last 50 years), intra-seasonal
variability of weather and irreversible changes of the hydrological regime. Development of an
efficient system of forest protection is a crucial prerequisite. Current fire protection requires
principal improvement of all its components (monitoring; technical and financial capacity;
education of population; etc). Preparation of boreal landscape structure against the
increasing threat of catastrophic fire is an urgent today’s problem. However, transition to
SFM is hindered by economic stagnation of vast territories (outside of areas of
intensively exploited natural resources) and unsatisfactory demographic processes.
Introduction of ecologically friendly methods of industrial development and integrated
land management on a landscape basis is one of the very few ways to introduce
proper carbon management in the region. A number of socio-economic and land
use - land cover scenarios for such development indicate the existence of possible
methods to do so if appropriate national policies will be developed and implemented. |
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