Comparison and effects of different climate-vegetation models in areas of complex terrain under climate change

Abstract

Identifying the impacts of climate change is important for conservation of ecosystems under climate change, particularly in mountain regions. Holdridge life zone system and Koppen classification provide two effective methods to assess impacts of climate change on ecosystems, as typical climate-vegetation models. Meanwhile, these previous studies are insufficient to assess the complex terrain as well as there are some uncertainties in results while using the given methods. Analysis of the impacts of the prevailing climate conditions in an area on shifts of ecosystems may reduce uncertainties in projecting climate change. In this study, we used different models to depict changes in ecosystems at 1 km × 1 km resolution in Sichuan Province, China during 1961–2010. The results indicate that changes in climate data during the past 50 years were sufficient to cause shifts in the spatial distribution of ecosystems. The trend of shift was from low temperature ecosystems to high temperature ecosystems. Compared with Koppen classification, the Holdridge system has better adaptation to assess the impacts of climate change on ecosystems in low elevation (0–1000 m). Moreover, we found that changed areas in ecosystems were easily affected by climate change than unchanged areas by calculating current climate condition.