The Impacts of Climate Change on Ecosystem Services in Tropical Areas

Abstract

Ecosystems generate a range of goods and services that are important for human wellbeing. However, these goods and services are decreasing from time to time due to climate change impacts across the tropics. Tropical area is one of the most climate change prone areas of the world. The objective of this paper was, therefore, to review the impacts of climate change on the four ecosystem services in tropical areas. Due to increasing temperature, the geographical distribution of the biological diversity is changing. As the result, the four ecosystem services namely; provisioning services, the cultural services, the regulating services, and the supporting services are affected. In tropics, the provisioning services, like food production ,the crop failure, loss of animal forage and water supply, loss of wild fish due to ocean acidification, scarcity of forest and forest products ,and loss of medicinal plants are the critical challenges taking place due to change in climate. In addition, the tropical ecosystem’s response to erosion, climate change, diseases and other ecological problems are declining. Some of the attractive resources such sacred lakes and other water resources and forest areas, which serve as centre for cultural services are being degraded due to climate change in tropical areas. The tropical soil resources are prone to moisture deficit and consequently the soil microorganism and the soil formation processes are disrupted. As conclusion, the ecosystem services of the tropical regions are under unprecedented pressure of climate change stresses. Therefore, any organization working on climate adaptation and mitigation project should play pivotal roles to reduce the impacts across the tropics. Keywords: Ecosystem Services, Climate Change, Impacts, Tropical Areas DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/12-12-01 Publication date: June 30 th 2022