Global Land Change (1982 to 2016)

Two recent papers in Nature quantified global land surface changes between 1982 and 2016.

Keenan and Riley (2018): Greening of the land surface.

That's nothing new - green vegetation has increased over the past decades due to (primarily) CO2 increases. In addition, global warming has led to a decline in temperature limitations and thus cold regions has experienced rapid increases in green vegetation.

Song et al. (2018): Land change.

Overall we see less bare ground and more vegetation and that is consistent with the overall greening trend.

• Net loss of forest in the tropics, net gain of forest in the extra tropics for a net overall gain in forest.
• Deforestation in the tropics due to agriculture expansion. The three countries with the largest forest loss: Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.
• Forest / woody vegetation expansion in cold regions (Siberia, Quebec, etc.) and other places due to locally increases in precipitation and CO2 fertilization.
• Bare ground cover has decreased, primarily due to agriculture, resource extraction, and urban sprawl. However, bare ground has increased due to land degradation in arid and semi-arid parts of the world.