The Impacts of Land Use on Climate Change
Deforestation, urban sprawl, agriculture, and other human influences have substantially altered and fragmented our landscape. Such disturbance of the land can change the global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the principal heat-trapping gas, as well as affect local, regional, and global climate by changing the energy balance on Earth's surface.
Current efforts to combat global warming focus on reducing the emission of heat-trapping gases, but do not fully address the substantial contribution of land use to climate change. Since even small changes of 100 square kilometers in urban development or deforestation can change local rainfall patterns and trigger other climate disruptions, science and public policy must evolve to factor in all of the components of human-induced climate change.
A paper that appeared in the journal Climate Policy discusses the effects of land use on the climate. Entitled "The climatic impacts of land surface change and carbon management, and the implications for climate-change mitigation policy," it arose from a workshop sponsored by the Aspen Global Change Institute.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and minimizing the loss of forests and other ecosystems are measures we need to take to reduce global warming. UCS has outlined practical solutions and actions we can take today to achieve these goals and slow climate change.
