Elevated CO2 moderates the impact of climate change on future bamboo distribution in Madagascar

Meinan Zhang; Trevor F Keenan; Xiangzhong Luo; Josep M Serra-Diaz; Wenyu Li; Tony King; Qu Cheng; Zhichao Li; Roger Lala Andriamiarisoa; Tahiry Ny Aina Nomenjanahary Raherivelo; Yanxia Li; Peng Gong

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152235

Elevated CO₂ moderates the impact of climate change on future bamboo distribution in Madagascar

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Mar 1:810:152235. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152235. Epub 2021 Dec 8.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Environment of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Institute of Forest Ecology, Environment and Nature Conservation, Chinese Academy of Forestry, China; Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Climate and Ecosystem Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Electronic address: meinanzhang@caf.ac.cn.
² Climate and Ecosystem Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Electronic address: trevorkeenan@berkeley.edu.
³ Climate and Ecosystem Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
⁴ Université de Lorraine, AgroParisTech, INRAE, Silva, Nancy, France.
⁵ Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
⁶ The Aspinall Foundation Madagascar Programme, Antananarivo, Madagascar; The Aspinall Foundation, Port Lympne Reserve, United Kingdom; Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom.
⁷ Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁸ Missouri Botanical Garden, Antananarivo, Madagascar.
⁹ Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, Antananarivo, Madagascar.
¹⁰ International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation, Beijing, China.

PMID: 34890677
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152235

Abstract

The distribution of bamboo is sensitive to climate change and is also potentially affected by increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations due to its C3 photosynthetic pathway. Yet the effect of CO₂ in climate impact assessments of potential changes in bamboo distribution has to date been overlooked. In this study, we proposed a simple and quantitative method to incorporate the impact of atmospheric CO₂ concentration into a species distribution modeling framework. To do so, we implemented 10 niche modeling algorithms with regionally downscaled climatic variables and combined field campaign observations. We assessed future climate impacts on the distribution of an economically and ecologically important and widely distributed bamboo species in Madagascar, and examined the effect of increasing CO₂ on future projections. Our results suggested that future climatic changes negatively impact potential bamboo distribution in Madagascar, leading to a decline of 34.8% of climatic suitability and a decline of 63.6 ± 3.2% in suitable areas towards 2100 under RCP 8.5. However, increasing atmosphere CO₂ offsets the climate impact for bamboo, and led to a smaller reduction of 19.8% in suitability and a potential distribution expansion of +111.6 ± 9.8% in newly suitable areas. We also found that the decline in climatic suitability for bamboo was related to increasing monthly potential evapotranspiration of the warmest quarter and minimum temperature of the warmest month. Conversely, the decreasing isothermality and increasing precipitation of the warmest quarter contributed to projected increase in bamboo-suitable areas. Our study suggested that elevated CO₂ may mitigate the decrease in climatic suitability and increase bamboo-suitable areas, through enhancing water use efficiency and decreasing potential evapotranspiration. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for the CO₂ effect on future plant species distributions, and provide a mechanistic approach to do so for ecosystems constrained by water.

Keywords: Climate impact assessment; Distribution change; Potential evapotranspiration; Species distribution modeling.

MeSH terms

Carbon Dioxide
Climate Change*
Ecosystem*
Forecasting
Madagascar

Substances

Carbon Dioxide