Analysis of recorded temperature in the past century shows a global surface average temperature rise of approximately 0.74℃. Following projections from numerous general circulation models, China would experience obvious climate changes in the future. These changes in the climate can induce substantial variations in structure and function of terrestrial ecosystem, thus inducing changes in ecosystem services. Net primary productivity (NPP) is the rate at which carbohydrates accumulate in a plant’s tissues. NPP is not only an important index to describe an ecosystem’s structure and function, but also a key element in describing carbon sequestration in an ecosystem during climate change.

Dr. ZHAO Dongsheng, Prof. WU Shaohong and Dr. YIN Yunhe from Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, simulated the NPP of ecosystems in China under regional climate change scenarios (A2, B2 and A1B) based on a developed Lund-Postsdam-Jena Dynamic Global Vegetation Model for China. The temporal and spatial changes in the NPP of ecosystems in different regions were examined according to eco-regions.

They found that changes in climate would lead to a serious impact on the natural ecosystem’s NPP in general. In the near term, the impact of climate change on the ecosystem may be minimal; more than half of the ecosystems may benefit from the change. However, an adverse impact may occur in the middle term. In the long term, more than half of ecosystems may be exposed to adverse effects. NPP enhancement may appear mainly in the Tibetan Plateau and northwest arid region. The other eco-regions may be dominated by NPP decrease. Although NPP may increase by a relatively high percentage in the Tibetan Plateau and northwest arid region, it cannot generate a significant influence on the overall NPP distribution in China because of its low initial productivity level. Therefore, the spatial distribution of NPP, which decreases from the southeast coast to the northwest inland, would not be altered under the climate change scenarios.

The related results have been published in the journal of PloS ONE (Zhao D, Wu S, Yin Y (2013) Responses of Terrestrial Ecosystems’ Net Primary Productivity to Future Regional Climate Change in China. PLoS ONE 8(4): e60849. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060849). The complete paper is available online at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060849 .