How vulnerable are ecosystems in the Limpopo province to climate change?

Abstract

South Africa's biomes are characterized by their exceptional biodiversity and they provide important ecosystem services such as food, livestock production, medical plants or fuel wood to people. However, during recent decades, vegetation in South Africa experienced substantial changes and loss of biodiversity due to habitat loss, intensification of land use and climate change. The development of sustainable management policies requires an understanding of interactions between vegetation, climate change as well as land use and an identification of the areas most vulnerable to vegetation change. Here, we use the aDGVM, a dynamic vegetation model for tropical ecosystems, to investigate the risk of biome shifts in South Africa's Limpopo province under a set of IPCC climate change trajectories. The Limpopo province exemplifies an area highly susceptible to climate and land use change, where people in rural areas heavily rely on natural resources. We found a general trend towards more tree-dominated ecosystems and a particularly high risk of vegetation shift in more open grassland and savanna areas. The rate of biome shift is strongly linked to the IPCC scenario applied with the highest risk of biome shifts in the RCP 8.5 scenario. We conclude that, irrespective of future climate trajectories, management and conservation initiatives should particularly focus on these more open grassland and savanna ecosystems.