Wednesday, August 8, 2018: 8:20 AM
240-241, New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
ABSTRACT WITHDRAWN
Hyeyeong Choe, Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA and James H. Thorne, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA
Hyeyeong Choe, University of California, Davis;
James H. Thorne, University of California, Davis
Background/Question/Methods
The impacts of climate change on forests cross administrative borders and require a new paradigm to address forest conservation and adaptation strategies across local jurisdictions and international borders. Here we measure climate risk to the Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forest Biome of East Asia and identify what areas will need climate change conservation or climate adaptation strategies, and whether those are internal to, or cross political administrative boundaries, to explore the degree to which transboundary coordination will be needed.
The East Asian Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forest Biome occupies 3,092,381 km2, covering 18 ecoregions, five countries and 102 provinces. We quantified future climate risk to each of five forest types in each ecoregion as the change per-pixel in climate conditions relative to the baseline climate conditions. We described the climate conditions using mean annual minimum temperature and total annual precipitation and projected the climate risk using two Global Climate Models (INMCM4 and GFDL-CM3) and two RCP scenarios. Finally, we used national, province, and prefecture boundaries to overlay with the results of climate risk and to assess the locations where climate-stable and climate-risky forests crossed provincial or national boundaries and where those forests were located within a single administrative district.
Results/Conclusions
Under the RCP8.5 emissions 24.5-65.7% of forests enter the most marginal one percent or non-analog climates of baseline climate conditions by 2070, and these numbers decreased to 9.5-46.6% under the RCP4.5 emissions. Among the 18 ecoregions, the ecoregion with the highest proportion of climatically at risk forests was the Hokkaido ecoregion (By 2070 under the RCP8.5, 81.2% and 99.8% under INMCM4 and GFDL-CM3 models, respectively).
We identified the need for high levels of transboundary governmental coordination including forest preservation actions for 51 of 54 provinces containing climatically stable forest areas that span provincial administrative boundaries; and climate adaptation strategies for 90 of 96 provinces containing forests at high climate risk, that include the border areas of China, the Russian Federation, and North Korea. Even though forest climate assessments are underway in some countries of this region, none of them has identified the provincial or international level of coordination that will be needed for implementation. The development of transboundary climate change adaptation strategies is critical to preserve temperate forests in East Asia.
