Journal article
Modelled responses of the Kalahari Desert to 21st century climate and land use change
- Abstract:
- Drylands are home to over 2 billion people globally, many of whom use the land for agricultural and pastoral activities. These vulnerable livelihoods could be disrupted if desert dunefields become more active in response to climate and land use change. Despite increasing knowledge about the role that wind, moisture availability and vegetation cover play in shaping dryland landscapes, relatively little is known about how drylands might respond to climatic and population pressures over the 21st century. Here we use a newly developed numerical model, which fully couples vegetation and sediment-transport dynamics, to simulate potential landscape evolution at three locations in the Kalahari Desert, under two future emissions scenarios: stabilising (RCP 4.5) and high (RCP 8.5). Our simulations suggest that whilst our study sites will experience some climatically-induced landscape change, the impacts of climate change alone on vegetation cover and sediment mobility may be relatively small. However, human activity could strongly exacerbate certain landscape trajectories. Fire frequency has a primary impact on vegetation cover, and, together with grazing pressure, plays a significant role in modulating shrub encroachment and ensuing land degradation processes. Appropriate land management strategies must be implemented across the Kalahari Desert to avoid severe environmental and socio-economic consequences over the coming decades.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.5MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41598-017-04341-0
Authors
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Journal:
- Scientific Reports More from this journal
- Volume:
- 7
- Pages:
- 3887
- Publication date:
- 2017-06-01
- Acceptance date:
- 2017-05-23
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2045-2322
- ISSN:
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2045-2322
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:697005
- UUID:
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uuid:b78d6ffb-9066-4650-a6b6-23447041c9cd
- Local pid:
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pubs:697005
- Source identifiers:
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697005
- Deposit date:
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2017-05-24
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Mayaud et al
- Copyright date:
- 2017
- Notes:
- © The Author(s) 2017. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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