Projected patterns of land uses in Africa under a warming climate

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 12315 - 19
• Main Authors: Yahaya, Ibrahim, Xu, Runhong, Zhou, Jian, Jiang, Shan, Su, Buda, Huang, Jinlong, Cheng, Jing, Dong, Zhibo, Jiang, Tong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 29.05.2024; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 704/172; 704/844; Agricultural land; Biodiversity; Biodiversity loss; Climate change; Crops; Global warming; Grasslands; Humanities and Social Sciences; Land use; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Africa
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-61035-0

Land-use change is a direct driver of biodiversity loss, projection and future land use change often consider a topical issue in response to climate change. Yet few studies have projected land-use changes over Africa, owing to large uncertainties. We project changes in land-use and land-use transfer under future climate for three specified time periods: 2021–2040, 2041–2060, and 2081–2100, and compares the performance of various scenarios using observational land-use data for the year 2020 and projected land-use under seven Shared Socioeconomic Pathways Scenarios (SSP): SSP1-1.9, SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, SSP4-3.4, SSP4-6.0 and SSP5-8.5 from 2015 to 2100 in Africa. The observational land-use types for the year 2020 depict a change and show linear relationship between observational and simulated land-use with a strong correlation of 0.89 (P < 0.01) over Africa. Relative to the reference period (1995–2014), for (2021–2040), (2041–2060), (2081–2100), barren land and forest land are projected to decrease by an average of (6%, 11%, 16%), (9%, 19%, 38%) respectively, while, crop land, grassland and urban land area are projected to increase by (36%, 58%, and 105%), (4%, 7% and 11%), and (139%, 275% and 450%) respectively. Results show a substantial variations of land use transfer between scenarios with major from barren land to crop land, for the whole future period (2015–2100). Although SSP4-3.4 project the least transfer. Population and GDP show a relationship with cropland and barren land. The greatest conversion of barren land to crop land could endanger biodiversity and have negative effects on how well the African continent's ecosystem’s function.