Climate change and its impacts on vegetation distribution and net primary productivity of the alpine ecosystem in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Changes in climate have caused impacts on ecosystems on all continents scale, and climate change is also projected to be a stressor on most ecosystems even at the rate of low-to medium-range warming scenarios. Alpine ecosystem in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is vulnerable to climate change. To quantify the climate change impacts on alpine ecosystems, we simulated the vegetation distribution and net primary production in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau for three future periods (2020s, 2050s and 2080s) using climate projection for RCPs (Representative Concentration Pathways) RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. The modified Lund-Potsdam-Jena Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (LPJ model) was parameter and test to make it applicable to the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Climate projections that were applied to LPJ model in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau showed trends toward warmer and wetter conditions. Results based on climate projections indicated changes from 1.3 degrees C to 4.2 degrees C in annual temperature and changes from 2% to 5% in annual precipitation. The main impacts on vegetation ddistribution was increase in the area of forests and shrubs, decrease in alpine meadows which mainly replaced by shrubs which dominated the eastern plateau, and expanding in alpine steppes to the northwest dominated the western and northern plateau. The NPP was projected to increase by 79% and 134% under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The projected NPP generally increased about 200 g C.m(-2) .yr(-1) in most parts of the plateau with a gradual increase from the eastern to the western region of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau at the end of this century. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.