Abstract
Central Asian grasslands are extensively used for pastoral livestock grazing. This traditional land use is nowadays characterized by intensifying grasslands into more productive pastures. This change affects biodiversity and diminishes grasslands’ ecological role. Biodiversity impacts are probably also exacerbated by climate change. These changes in biodiversity are poorly studied in Central Asia. Here, we estimated potential biodiversity changes in the Central Asian grasslands using the latest shared socio-economic pathways and the representative concentration pathways (i.e., SSP-RCP scenario framework). We selected scenarios with contrasting socio-economic and climate conditions (i.e., SSP1-RCP4.5, SSP3-RCP8.5, SSP4-RCP4.5, and SSP5-RCP8.5) and further detailed the land-use scenarios for the region using stakeholders’ input. We indicated future biodiversity by the mean species abundance indicator. The contrasting scenario combinations showed that grasslands’ biodiversity will decline under each scenario. The strongest impact on biodiversity is expected in SSP5-RCP8.5, where half of the grasslands are likely to lose most of their local originally occurring species by 2100. The lowest impact is expected in SSP4-RCP4.5. Our study stresses the potential vulnerability of this region to increasing land-use intensity and climate change. These impact projections can help regional decision makers to develop and implement better biodiversity-conservation and sustainable management policies for these grasslands.
Highlights
Grasslands are among the world’s most impacted ecosystems, largely because changes in land use and climate have mainly decrease biodiversity (Newbold et al 2016; Newbold 2018)
Our land-use scenarios showed that grazing intensification will potentially trigger large biodiversity changes in the region over the course of this century
Our analysis showed that biodiversity in the Central Asian grasslands has a high potential to change in all scenarios
Summary
Grasslands are among the world’s most impacted ecosystems, largely because changes in land use and climate have mainly decrease biodiversity (Newbold et al 2016; Newbold 2018). The grasslands of Central Asia, considered the most extensive grassland region in the world, are no exception as they are nowadays transformed by climate and land-use changes (Suleimenov 2014; Zhang et al 2018a). The Central Asian grasslands provide important habitats for many species that are of global and regional conservation concern (IUCN 2019), including steppe birds (Kamp et al 2009; Kamp et al 2011), large ungulates such as the Saiga tatarica (Mallon and Zhigang 2009), and diverse plant communities (Kamp et al 2016). Land abandonment trends are slowing and the traditional mobile pastoralism is being replaced by collective and sedentary grazing systems This intensified grazing leads to substantial changes in the vegetation structure and composition of these grasslands. These unique challenges related to biodiversity have been explored through species-specific responses for different taxonomic groups (Kamp et al 2012; Brinkert et al 2016)
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