Abstract
Climate change has brought significant impacts upon the natural ecological environment and human social development. The future carbon balance study has become an important part of research on the impacts of climate change. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is a key area for studying climate change. Grassland, as a typical ecosystem of the QTP, embodies the sensitivity of the plateau to the climatic environment, so the carbon balance of grassland under future climate change conditions is important for studying global change. This paper reviewed the literature on carbon balance projection of grassland on the QTP under climate change. Two types of research methods were used to analyze and discuss the studies’ results, including experimental scenario projection and model projection. The experiment projected that appropriate temperature and moisture could enhance the carbon sink capacity of a grassland ecosystem, where moisture played a leading role. The model projection results showed that the carbon balance under different spatial and temporal scales were different. Although both can project the carbon balance of the study area, there are still some uncertainties. In addition, this research area should also consider the influence of human activity and plateau pikas to more accurately project the future carbon balance.
Highlights
Climate change is the main issue facing the current ecological environment
The results showed that when the temperature increased by 2 ◦C, net primary productivity (NPP) increased by 9%, soil organic carbon decreased by 10%, such that the grassland ecosystem showed a trend toward becoming a carbon source [28]
This paper reviewed the research on the carbon balance projection of grassland ecosystems on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) under climate change, and mainly integrated and summarized two research methods: experimental scenario projections and model projections
Summary
Climate change is the main issue facing the current ecological environment. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that climate change is an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human society and the planet [1]. RCP2.6 is a scenario in which the global average temperature rise is limited to 2 ◦C, RCP4.5 is a scenario in which the radiative forcing is stabilized at 4.5 W·m−2 in 2100, RCP6.0 is a scenario in which the radiative forcing is stabilized at 6.0 W·m−2 in 2100, and RCP8.5 is the scenario with the highest greenhouse gas emissions [43] Results from this simulation study of frozen soil degradation showed that the degradation area of permafrost would increase with time, and regarding its performance in the short term (2011–2040), the permafrost degradation area would be the smallest and the data showed that the degradation rate of the permafrost under the paths of RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, and RCP8.5 would be 17.17%, 18.07%, 12.95%, and 15.66%, respectively; in the medium term (2041–2070), the degradation of frozen soil would be faster; and in the long term (2071–2099), permafrost degradation area would be the largest, among which, the distribution of permafrost simulated in RCP8.5 path would decrease by 64.31% [42].
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