Journal Article
Potential aboveground biomass increase in Brazilian Atlantic Forest fragments with climate change
Igor José Malfetoni Ferreira; Wesley Augusto Campanharo; Marisa Gesteira Fonseca; Maria Isabel Sobral Escada; Marcelo Trindade Nascimento; Dora M. Villela; Pedro Brancalion; Luiz Fernando Silva Magnago; Liana Oighenstein Anderson; Laszlo Nagy; Luiz E. O. C. Aragão
Global Change Biology · Vol. 29, Issue 11 · pp. 3098-3113 · 2023
Abstract
Fragmented tropical forest landscapes preserve much of the remaining biodiversity and carbon stocks. Climate change is expected to intensify droughts and increase fire hazard and fire intensities, thereby causing habitat deterioration, and losses of biodiversity and carbon stock losses. Understanding the trajectories that these landscapes may follow under increased climate pressure is imperative for establishing strategies for conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here, we used a quantitative predictive modelling approach to project the spatial distribution of the aboveground biomass density (AGB) by the end of the 21st century across the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (AF) domain. To develop the models, we used the maximum entropy method with projected climate data to 2100, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 from the fifth Assessment Report. Our AGB models had a satisfactory performance (area under the curve > 0.75 and p value