Paper in Climatology Journal finds “Deforestation generally results in [climate] warming, with the exception of a shift from forest to agriculture.”

In Maryland, a new study in the International Journal of Climatology – by researchers from the University of Maryland, Purdue University, and the University of Colorado in Boulder – found that “most land-use changes, especially urbanization, result in warming. A clear exception is conversion of land from other uses to agriculture, which produces relative cooling, presumably because of increased evaporation.” Human-induced changes (warming) in climate have been viewed by most scientists as primarily the result of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The current paper is the latest of a number of studies in recent years that are shedding light on the climate change impact of land cover change.

“What we highlight here is that a significant trend, particularly the warming trend in terms of temperatures, can also be partially explained by land-use change,” said Niyogi, a Purdue earth and atmospheric sciences professor and the Indiana state climatologist, who is the corresponding author of the article.The study found that, the more vegetation covering an area of land, the cooler its contribution to surface temperature; Conversion to agriculture results in cooling, while conversion from agriculture generally results in warming. Deforestation generally results in warming, with the exception of a shift from forest to agriculture.

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