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Anne Birgitte Nielsen

Anne Birgitte Nielsen

Senior lecturer

Anne Birgitte Nielsen

Causes of Regional Change—Land Cover

Author

  • Marie-José Gaillard
  • Thomas Kleinen
  • Patrick Samuelsson
  • Anne Birgitte Nielsen
  • Johan Bergh
  • Jed Kaplan
  • Anneli Poska
  • Camilla Sandström
  • Gustav Strandberg
  • Anna-Kari Trondman
  • Anna Wramneby

Editor

  • The BACC II Author Team

Summary, in English

Anthropogenic land-cover change (ALCC) is one of the few climate forcings for which the net direction of the climate response over the last two centuries is still not known. The uncertainty is due to the often counteracting temperature responses to the many biogeophysical effects and to the biogeochemical versus biogeophysical effects. Palaeoecological studies show that the major transformation of the landscape by anthropogenic activities in the southern zone of the Baltic Sea basin occurred between 6000 and 3000/2500 cal year BP. The only modelling study of the biogeophysical effects of past ALCCs on regional climate in north-western Europe suggests that deforestation between 6000 and 200 cal year BP may have caused significant change in winter and summer temperature. There is no indication that deforestation in the Baltic Sea area since AD 1850 would have been a major cause of the recent climate warming in the region through a positive biogeochemical feedback. Several model studies suggest that boreal reforestationReforestationmight not be an effective climate warming mitigation tool as it might lead to increased warming through biogeophysical processes.

Department/s

  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system
  • Centre for Environmental and Climate Science (CEC)

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

453-477

Publication/Series

Second Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea Basin

Document type

Book chapter

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Earth and Related Environmental Sciences

Status

Published

Project

  • Land-Sea Interactions over the last 6000 years (LSI6K): Impact of land-use change on terrestrial carbon pools in the Baltic Sea catchment, and their effect on aquatic ecosystems

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISBN: 978-3-319-16006-1
  • ISBN: 978-3-319-16006-1