Reply to Feeley and Rehm: Land-use intensification increases risk of species losses from climate change

Reply to Feeley and Rehm: Land-use intensification increases risk of species losses from climate change.

A growing body of evidence challenges the view that species’ ranges are shifting unidirectionally in response to anthropogenic climate change (1). As Feeley and Rehm (2) point out, our resurvey of Chimborazo’s vegetation (3) presents yet another example of the complex dynamics of ongoing range shifts. Although we do find a strong average upslope trend, we also note that several species are lagg...

Reply to Feeley and Machovina: Trophic ecology complements estimates of land use change due to food production.

Potential climate forcing of land use and land cover change

Pressure on land resources is expected to increase as global population continues to climb and the world becomes more affluent, swelling the demand for food. Changing climate may exert additional pressures on natural lands as present-day productive regions may shift, or soil quality may degrade, and the recent rise in demand for biofuels increases competition with edible crops for arable land. ...

Disease emergence from global climate and land use change.

Climate change and land use change can affect multiple infectious diseases of humans, acting either independently or synergistically. Expanded efforts in empiric and future scenario-based risk assessment are required to anticipate problems. Moreover, the many health impacts of climate and land use change must be examined in the context of the myriad other environmental and behavioral determinan...

Assessing ecosystem threats from global and regional change: hierarchical modeling of risk to sagebrush ecosystems from climate change, land use and invasive species in Nevada, USA

Global change poses significant challenges for ecosystem conservation. At regional scales, climate change may lead to extensive shifts in species distributions and widespread extirpations or extinctions. At landscape scales, land use and invasive species disrupt ecosystem function and reduce species richness. However, a lack of spatially explicit models of risk to ecosystems makes it difficult ...