PNNL

Abstract

The UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow spawned the enhancement and update of many nations’ climate pledges. Previous research has investigated the effects of these pledges on limiting planetary warming, but their spatially explicit effects on land use/cover are unknown. Here, we linked the set of Glasgow pledges making the 2? warming limit possible and the spatially explicit responses of the Tibetan Plateau’s land systems. We find that although the 2? target will not affect the shares of forestland, grassland/pasture, shrubland, and cropland globally, it needs a 9.4% increase in the forest area of the Tibetan plateau. This need is an area 11.4 times the increase of the plateau’s forest from 2010 to 2020, greater than the size of Belgium. The increased forest comes mainly from the medium-density grassland at the Yangtze River basin, calling for more proactive environmental management for the headwaters area of this longest river of Asia.