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Implications of climate change on mitigation potential estimates for forest sector in India

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Abstract

Climate change is projected to impact forest ecosystems, including biodiversity and Net Primary Productivity (NPP). National level carbon forest sector mitigation potential estimates are available for India; however impacts of projected climate change are not included in the mitigation potential estimates. Change in NPP (in gC/m2/yr) is taken to represent the impacts of climate change. Long term impacts of climate change (2085) on the NPP of Indian forests are available; however no such regional estimates are available for short and medium terms. The present study based on GCM climatology scenarios projects the short, medium and long term impacts of climate change on forest ecosystems especially on NPP using BIOME4 vegetation model. We estimate that under A2 scenario by the year 2030 the NPP changes by (−5) to 40% across different agro-ecological zones (AEZ). By 2050 it increases by 15% to 59% and by 2070 it increases by 34 to 84%. However, under B2 scenario it increases only by 3 to 25%, 3.5 to 34% and (−2.5) to 38% respectively, in the same time periods. The cumulative mitigation potential is estimated to increase by up to 21% (by nearly 1 GtC) under A2 scenario between the years 2008 and 2108, whereas, under B2 the mitigation potential increases only by 14% (646 MtC). However, cumulative mitigation potential estimates obtained from IBIS—a dynamic global vegetation model suggest much smaller gains, where mitigation potential increases by only 6% and 5% during the period 2008 to 2108.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Climate Economics Branch, Climate Change Division, US Environmental Protection Agency through the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, through Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. The IBIS modeling component of the research was supported by the Royal Norwegian Embassy. We thank IITM, Pune, and in particular K Krishna Kumar and Savita Patwardhan for providing HadRM3 climate projections under the NATCOM project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Sustainable Technologies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560 012, India

    N. H. Ravindranath

  2. Center for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560 012, India

    Rajiv K. Chaturvedi, N. V. Joshi & R. Sukumar

  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Jayant Sathaye

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  1. N. H. Ravindranath
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  2. Rajiv K. Chaturvedi
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  3. N. V. Joshi
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  4. R. Sukumar
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  5. Jayant Sathaye
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Correspondence to N. H. Ravindranath.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

List of PFTs in BIOME4 Model

Trees

Non-trees

1. Tropical broadleaf

7. Temperate grass

2. Temperate broadleaf evergreen

8. Tropical grass

3. Temperate broadleaf summer green

9. Desert woody shrub

4. Temperate needle leaf evergreen

10. Tundra woody shrub

5. Cold evergreen

11. Cold herbaceous

6. Cold deciduous

12. Cushion-forb

List of different biome types as simulated in BIOME4

1. Tropical evergreen forest

2. Tropical semi-deciduous forest

3. Tropical deciduous forest/woodland

4. Temperate deciduous forest

5. Temperate conifer forest

6. Warm mixed forest

7. Cool mixed forest

8. Cool conifer forest

9. Cold mixed forest

10. Evegreen taiga/montane forest

11. Deciduous taiga/montane forest

12. Tropical savanna

13. Tropical xerophytic shrubland

14. Temperate xerophytic shrubland

15. Temperate sclerophyll woodland

16. Temperate broadleaved savanna

17. Open conifer woodland

18. Boreal parkland

19. Tropical grassland

20. Temperate grassland

21. Desert

22. Steppe tundra

23. Shrub tundra

24. Dwarf shrub tundra

25. Prostrate shrub tundra

26. Cushion-forbs, lichen and moss

27. Barren

28. Land ice

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Ravindranath, N.H., Chaturvedi, R.K., Joshi, N.V. et al. Implications of climate change on mitigation potential estimates for forest sector in India. Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change 16, 211–227 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-010-9256-8

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