Signal 60 percent of ice-free land beyond local EcoRisk boundaries

Summary

Human appropriation of net primary production is a pressure metric, so it misses changes in ecosystem function such as shifts in vegetation structure, biomass storage and the water, carbon and nitrogen cycles. To fill this gap, Stenzel and colleagues built the EcoRisk indicator, which uses runs of the LPJmL5 dynamic global vegetation model to measure changes in biogeochemical cycles as a proxy for the risk of ecosystem destabilization. EcoRisk shows that many ecosystems are markedly degraded compared with pre-industrial conditions. Areas of intensive land use and deforestation, along with climate-sensitive zones such as deserts, emerge as high-risk regions. Applying local boundaries derived for the scales at which land-use decisions are made, 60 percent of ice-free land exceeds them and 38 percent is already at high risk of degradation.