image: Museum specimen of the grey partridge (Perdix perdix) which has experienced severe population declines in Europe over the last decades, most likely due to agricultural intensification to which bioenergy cropland expansion is increasingly contributing. view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Christian Hof.
A study suggests that the biodiversity-related effects of land-use change for bioenergy crops may offset gains from adoption of bioenergy as a climate change mitigation strategy. Climate change, particularly in the high-emission scenarios of some global climate projections, affects biodiversity worldwide. Land-use change can also endanger biodiversity by destroying and fragmenting habitats. Previous studies have shown that land-use change and climate change can act synergistically to reduce biodiversity. Christian Hof and colleagues conducted climate-based model simulations to identify potential changes in vertebrate diversity and linked the changes to land-use change simulations, thus determining the combined impacts of climate and land-use change under low-emission and high-emission scenarios. The results suggest that under a high-emission scenario, climate change effects on biodiversity are stronger than effects of land-use changes, but under low-emission scenarios, such as those sought by the 2015 Paris Agreement, land-use change affects biodiversity to a degree that is not offset by climate change reduction, largely due to the projected expansion of bioenergy cropland. According to the authors, widespread implementation of bioenergy cropland expansion as a climate change mitigation strategy may affect vertebrate biodiversity as much as a high-emission scenario, suggesting a need for alternative mitigation strategies to reduce biodiversity impacts.
###
Article #18-07745: "Bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity," by Christian Hof et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Christian Hof, Technical University of Munich, Freising, GERMANY; tel: +498161712489; e-mail: christian.hof@tum.de
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences