Natural Resources, School of

 

Authors

Sebastiaan Luyssaert, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l’Environnement (LSCE)Follow
Mathilde Jammet, University of Copenhagen
Paul C. Stoy, Montana State University-Bozeman
Stephen Estel, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Julia Pongratz, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Eric Ceschia, Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la BIOsphère (CESBIO), Université Toulouse
Galina Churkina, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Axel Don, Institute of Agricultural Climate Research, Braunschweig, Germany
Karl Heinz Erb, Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt-Vienna-Graz
Morgan Ferlicoq, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Bert Gielen, University of Antwerp
Thomas Grünwald, Technische Universität Dresden
Richard A. Houghton, Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA
Katja Klumpp, INRA, Grassland Ecosystem Research (UREP), Clermont-Ferrand, France
Alexander Knohl, Georg-August University of Göttingen
Thomas Kolb, Northern Arizona University
Tobias Kuemmerle, Montana State University-Bozeman
Tuomas Laurila, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki
Annalea Lohila, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki
Denis Loustau, INRA, unité EPHYSE, Villenave d’Ornon, France,
Matthew J. McGrath, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l’Environnement (LSCE), Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Patrick Meyfroidt, Université catholique de Louvain
Eddy J. Moors, Alterr, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Kim Naudts, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l’Environnement (LSCE), Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Kim Novick, USDA Forest Service – Southern Research Station, Otto, NC
Juliane Otto, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l’Environnement (LSCE), Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Kim Pilegaard, Technical University of Denmark
Casimiro A. Pio, University of Aveiro
Serge Rambal, CEFE CNRS, Montpellier, France,
Corinna Rebmann, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung GmbH – UFZ
James Ryder, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l’Environnement (LSCE), Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Andrew E. Suyker, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Andrej Varlagin, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
Martin Wattenbach, GFZ German Research Center For Geoscience, Potsdam
A. Johannes Dolman, VU University Amsterdam

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

4-2014

Citation

NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE VOL 4 (MAY 2014), pp 389-393
DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2196

Sebastiaan.Luyssaert@lsce.ipsl.fr

Comments

US government work.

Abstract

Anthropogenic changes to land cover (LCC) remain common, but continuing land scarcity promotes the widespread intensification of land management changes (LMC) to better satisfy societal demand for food, fibre, fuel and shelter. The biophysical effects of LCC on surface climate are largely understood, particularly for the boreal and tropical zones, but fewer studies have investigated the biophysical consequences of LMC; that is, anthropogenic modification without a change in land cover type. Harmonized analysis of ground measurements and remote sensing observations of both LCC and LMC revealed that, in the temperate zone, potential surface cooling from increased albedo is typically offset by warming from decreased sensible heat fluxes, with the net effect being a warming of the surface. Temperature changes from LMC and LCC were of the same magnitude, and averaged 2 K at the vegetation surface and were estimated at 1.7 K in the planetary boundary layer. Given the spatial extent of land management (42–58% of the land surface) this calls for increasing the efforts to integrate land management in Earth System Science to better take into account the human impact on the climate.

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