Climate Change Air Pollution And Global Challenges

There are significant pressures from climate change and air pollution that forests currently face. This book aims to increase understanding of the state and potential of forest ecosystems to mitigate and adapt to climate change in a polluted environment. It reconciles process-oriented research, long-term monitoring and applied modeling through comprehensive forest ecosystem research. Furthermore, it introduces "forest super sites for research for integrating soil, plant and atmospheric sciences and monitoring. It also provides mechanistic and policy-oriented modeling with scientifically sound risk indications regarding atmospheric changes and ecosystem services. Identifies current knowledge gaps and emerging research needs Highlights novel methodologies and integrated research concepts Assesses ecological meaning of investigations and prioritizing research need

This chapter outlines the aims and scope of the book. An introduction is given to the current status of knowledge which is presented on the topic of the book. Arguments are presented for writing the book, in view of continued, long-term and process-based research needed for mitigating ecological and socio-economic risks to forests under global change. The book will conclude on suggestions for decision making and reasons for continued funding of related research.

This book discusses regional and international climate-change, air- pollution and human-health scenarios. The research, from both industrialized and developing countries, focuses on region-specific perspectives of climate change impacts on air pollution. After analyzing the variations of climate data over recent decades, the authors consider the different effects of climate change on air pollution and health. As stressed by the IPCC, “pollen, smoke and ozone levels are likely to increase in a warming world, affecting the health of residents of major cities. Rising temperatures will worsen air quality through a combination of more ozone in cities, bigger wild fires and worse pollen outbreaks,” according to a major UN climate report. The report follows the World Health Organization in finding that air pollution is the world’s greatest environmental health risk, killing 7 million people in 2014 (compared to 0.4 million deaths due to malaria). Deteriorating air quality will most affect the elderly, children, people with chronic ill-health and expectant mothers. Another report suggests that more than 5.5 million people die prematurely each year due to air pollution with over half of those deaths occurring in China and India. A study on the air pollution in the USA,suggests that more than half of US population lives in areas with potentially dangerous air pollution, and about six out of 10 of the top cities for air pollution in the USA are located in the state of California. In the face of future climate change, scientists have urged stronger emission controls to avoid worsening air pollution and the associated exacerbation of health problems, especially in more populated regions of the world. It is hoped that the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement will help minimize air pollution. Additionally the authors consider the various measures that different countries and groups of countries, like the European Union, have adopted to mitigate the problems arising from climate change and to safeguard the health of population. The book examines the increasing incidence of diseases largely caused by climate change. The countries/regions covered in this study include the USA, Northern Europe (U.K).,Southern Europe ( Italy), Canada, Australia, East Asia, Russia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Caribbean countries, and Argentina.

Conclusions from the individual chapters are integrated into a synopsis, covering achievements and perspectives, and linking challenges for natural and social sciences, provisioning ecosystem services (ESs) under environmental change. The required research and policy making are facilitated by novel understanding of ecosystem functioning and internal factorial interactions with the atmosphere. A basis is provided through methodological progress for establishing forest research ‘supersites’ within global research networks, possessing capacities for creating generic mechanistic knowledge of ecological relevance. On such grounds, provisioning versus regulating ESs must accommodate diversification in the joint production of agricultural and forestry goods, backed by integrative bioeconomic land-use modelling. Advancement requires forest ecosystem-level unification of air pollution and climate change research while strengthening communication between experimentalists, monitoring experts, modellers, policy makers and stakeholders towards tool development for reliable risk assessment. A critical and appreciative view of forest functions and services is demanded in relation to the (post-)Kyoto debate.

Untangling the complex effects that different air pollution and climate change factors cause to forest ecosystems is challenging. Supersites, that is, comprehensive measurement sites where research and monitoring of the whole soil–plant–atmosphere system can be carried out, are suggested as a refinement of the current monitoring and research efforts in Europe. This chapter identifies and discusses key measurements to be carried out at such supersites, with a focus on four topical subjects: the carbon, nitrogen, ozone and water budgets. This kind of holistic approach is vital to a realistic translation of the ongoing changes in climate and air quality into research on the impacts on forest ecosystems. Such an integrated effort requires a considerable use of resources at highly instrumented measurement sites and can only be achieved by building on existing infrastructures.

Climate change is expected to affect the exchange of gases between forest ecosystems and the atmosphere. In this review, we focus on a few related topics, including the emission of greenhouse gases from the forest floor, and vegetation fires and their impact on air quality and soil CO2 efflux. In particular, we summarise the current state of knowledge on O3 deposition in forest ecosystems, both for stomatal uptake and non-stomatal sinks. Based on such summaries, we discuss interactions between forests, atmospheric composition and climate, and finally outline directions for multi- and interdisciplinary research required for mechanistically understanding such interrelationships.

The air pollution load to northern European forests is changing as a result of emission reductions. Climate change modifies this load, either directly via atmospheric processes or indirectly by affecting emission patterns. We estimate the risk of harmful effects due to tropospheric ozone and nitrogen deposition in present and future conditions. Our modelling results show that critical levels are exceeded in northern Europe for both ozone and nitrogen. Emission reductions will reduce the vegetation stress, but climate change is likely to have an opposite effect. While tropospheric ozone is reduced, its phytotoxic dose increases due to atmospheric warming. The amplified warming in the Arctic may significantly enhance shipping emissions. The effect of these increases extends to the boreal region. In addition, we review recent literature on the interactions between climate change and air quality, and discuss the assessment of pollution risks and carbon stocks and related synergies in emission control.

Contemporary societies expect a range of services (including of carbon sequestration) to be supplied from forest ecosystems. Their growing societal importance is clearly reflected in policies. The conceptual framework for the states that people are integral parts of ecosystems and that a dynamic interaction exists between them and other parts of ecosystems. This approach encompasses social, economic and environmental interactions, and the dynamics and cross scale issues that have multiple outcomes. However, forest multifunctionality is a challenge since the combination of multiple ecosystem services may be very different and dependent on a high number of factors. Stakeholder priorities with respect to individual ecosystem services may be variable, as may be a range of stakeholders. Reflexive, participatory and multilevel governance, in a continuous process of its adjustment, needs therefore to be developed to enable forestry decision-makers to consider existing opinions and behavioural patterns of the diverse stakeholders who drive the forestry change and respond to it. In such a retrospective, numerous questions have arisen, among which the integration of carbon sequestration into multifunctional forestry is among priorities. Carbon forestry enables society to buy time for development of low carbon and decarbonisation technologies; while its integration into multifunctional land use offers innovation, employment and new markets, with locally and regionally oriented value chains. This particularly concerns remote areas where forestry could foster socio-economic development and combine it with the enhancement of nature and rural landscape. However, the question: how to multiply synergies and balance trade-offs merits attention. Fostering resilience of forestry systems to climate change necessitates the establishment of an appropriate framework, because, although multipurpose afforestation may result in lower rates of carbon sequestration, it is expected to be more attractive to people as it will provide additional benefits and will promote sustainable development.