Planning for Community Resilience

Climate Change

Ecosystem Change and Carbon Storage

Description

Terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem resources are an important part of our health, economic growth, and intrinsic well-being. Ecosystems provide a wide variety of services that are of value to us such as filtering pollutants from the air we breathe and the water we drink, developing the soils that we depend on to grow food, and providing natural flood control in wetlands. Ecosystems also serve an important climate function as regulators of the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. With altering changes in temperature and precipitation, the ability for an ecosystem to sequester carbon decreases and leads to an eventual, dramatic change in the atmosphere.

H-GAC modeling of four ecological zones, present (2008), and future (2035)

Post-Ecological Sensitivity Chart (Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Source)

External Resources