Human disturbance caused stronger influences on global vegetation change than climate change

Xianliang Zhang; Xuanrui Huang

doi:10.7717/peerj.7763

Human disturbance caused stronger influences on global vegetation change than climate change

PeerJ. 2019 Sep 25:7:e7763. doi: 10.7717/peerj.7763. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Xianliang Zhang^{1

2}, Xuanrui Huang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ College of Forestry, Hebei Agricultrual University, Baoding, China.
² Long-term Forest Silviculture Research Station in Saihanba, Chengde, China.

Abstract

Global vegetation distribution has been influenced by human disturbance and climate change. The past vegetation changes were studied in numerous studies while few studies had addressed the relative contributions of human disturbance and climate change on vegetation change. To separate the influences of human disturbance and climate change on the vegetation changes, we compared the existing vegetation which indicates the vegetation distribution under human influences with the potential vegetation which reflects the vegetation distribution without human influences. The results showed that climate-induced vegetation changes only occurred in a few grid cells from the period 1982-1996 to the period 1997-2013. Human-induced vegetation changes occurred worldwide, except in the polar and desert regions. About 3% of total vegetation distribution was transformed by human activities from the period 1982-1996 to the period 1997-2013. Human disturbances caused stronger damage to global vegetation change than climate change. Our results indicated that the regions where vegetation experienced both human disturbance and climate change are eco-fragile regions.

Keywords: Climate change; Climatic effects; Human activity; Vegetation change; Vegetation types.

Grants and funding

This work was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFD060040301), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 41601045, 31570632, 41571094) and the talents introduction program in Hebei Agricultural University (YJ201918). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.