Work

Climate Impacts on Forest and Grassland Resilience in China: The Role of Climate Inter‐Annual Variability

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Understanding how vegetation resilience responds to climate change is crucial for maintaining ecosystem functions. This study focuses on forest and grassland ecosystems and uses theoretical recovery rate as a measure to assess climate impacts on their resilience over China. Our findings reveal that vegetation resilience varies across aridity‐dependent climate zones, with each zone showing different resilience–aridity relationships. Particularly, semi‐arid zones exhibit the lowest vegetation resilience, where the forest resilience declines as inter‐annual temperature and precipitation variability increases. In zones with sufficient water, the forest resilience remains stable. Grassland resilience decreases with increasing precipitation variability, but is insensitive to inter‐annual temperature variability. Future projections highlight the potential threat of climate change to regions encompassing more than 20% of vegetated areas, particularly in the forest‐grassland ecotones of North China. These findings enhance our understanding of climate‐ecosystem interactions and support the anticipation and management of ecosystem risks under climate change.

Source: Geophysical Research Letters

DOI: 10.1029/2025gl116854

Authors: Lifeng Wang, Da Nian, Naiming Yuan

Institutions: Sun Yat-sen University, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Language: English

Topic: Ecosystem dynamics and resilience

Subfield: Global and Planetary Change

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Climate action, Life on land

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,190