Climate Change Flashcards
Environment
The living and non-living elements of the Earth’s surface
Natural Biome
A community of life forms adapted to a large natural area
Anthropogenic Biome
The changes resulting from direct impacts of human activity on natural biomes
Land Cover Change
Transformations to the land resulting from direct impacts of human activity on natural biomes
Ecosystem
A biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment
Biodiversity loss
A decrease in the number, type and variety of living organisms within an environment
Climate Change
A change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns which lasts for an extended period of time
Sustainability
The ability to meet the needs of current and future generations through social, economic and environmental adaptations
Ecosystems services
Support services - create and replenish
provisioning services - create raw materials needed to live
Regulating services - controlling systems to provide life
Regulating biodiversity - creating space for well-being
How has government policy led to differences in the process of LCC between countries
Chinese government promotes rapid economic growth which has involved with rapid clearance of agriculture, mining and urban areas. However, despite promoting rapid LCC they also promote rejuvenating their LCC change rapidly as well, between 1990-2015 Child replanted their forest rapidly which allowed them to increase their area by 1.1% a year.
In Australia, the government passed the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation act in 1999 but due to the long procedures of this act and the government not promoting rapid LCC this has caused Australia’s forest to decrease at 0.1% per year during the same time period
How does Land ownership impact LCC in different countries
Australia has a mix of capitalism and socialism meaning people are able to have their own economic freedom but the government is allowed to interfere. Due to these rules, LCC within Australia is slow. If the government wants to create major LCC on private land they must buy out the land market value plus 10%.
However, China is a socialist market meaning it is largely. state owned economy due to its communist ideologies. China’s economy is largely a manufacturing economy and mass industrial LCC has occurred as the state owns the land. This allows LCC to be very rapid, an example of this is the Wuhan Hospital in the uprising of COVID-19, was built in a month.
Indigenous peoples land management practices
Australia’s Aboriginal people practice ‘firestick farming’ which involved the burning of land cover in order to regenerate areas of bush, promote opportunities for hunting and to reduce risk of wildfires. Overtime, this has allowed species to adapt to survive the low intensity fires such as Epicormic Buds and lignotubers
Predicting changes to land cover Environmental factors
- Soil
- Climate change
- Sea level change
- hydrological cycle
Predicting changes to land cover socio-economic factors
- Population
- Affluence
- Increasing technology
- Globalisation
Implications of Land Cover change
- Soil erosion and degradation
- Due to deforestation this removes trees from the land, this causes a decrease in shelter for the soil which causes an increase chance of surface erosion of soil
- When farmers and others plough the land, this creates gullies which promote channels for soil to run off - Loss of habitat and biodiversity
- Due to deforestation and climate change this causes a loss of habitat for fauna and more stressed flora
- This has caused 869 species to be on the brink of extinction
