On Land Use and Biodiversity Resilience: Hydrology, Temperature Regulation and the Fractal Nature of the Woodland-Grassland Interface

Abstract

The coverage of land territorial areas with either natural forests and grasslands, or instead with cultured farmland or urbanized areas, plays a primary role in climate regulation of the planet. The contribution of forest hydrology and local temperature regulation to global climate change, however, is not simply an area surface-dependent measure, like some global surveys suggest. There is also an important vertical component to it, affecting the atmospheric conditions and turning the land coverage into a volumetric, beneficial effect on the climate. Wood fires, on the contrary, constitute an additional climate threat. Historically, a certain health risk resulting from monotonous wood coverage has been foretold almost two centuries ago, without an exact knowledge of how these man-made plantations would impact the future climate. A case study based on comparing the Alpujarra and Low Country forests is included to indicate the different approaches followed in divergent cultures. In this paper, moreover, the notion of Woodland-Grassland Interface is introduced as a fractal model system. It not only describes the fractal geometry of the border, but also indicates the complex ecological interactions that constitute the biodiversity of an ecosystem. The same approach may be fruitful for modeling coral reefs and mangrove forests, all displaying some form of fractal network system. The appreciation of a border interface in all of these ecosystems is found crucial, both for mitigating climate adaptation and for improving biodiversity resilience.