A new study conducted by the University of Oxford reveals a map of the world that shows the effects of climate change and the areas most sensitive to its negative effects. The team of researchers created the map using the Vegetation Sensitivity Index, which they developed for use as a metric to measure how sensitive particular ecosystems are to climate change, with a focus on vegetation, as reported by Popular Science.
The team used satellite data from 2000 to 2013 to examine plants on a global scale, calculating the sensitivity index by examining the connection between satellite-measured vegetation ground cover and air temperature, water availability and degree of cloud cover, analyzing how these four factors changed over time. This process was conducted for every two-square-mile block on the Earth's land surface. Some areas, such as Antarctica and the Sahara desert, were simply classified as barren or ice-covered, but for all other areas they were graded on their sensitivity to climate change effects over the last 14 years.
The end result is a map of the data, showing areas of lower sensitivity in green, which adapt better to changes in climate, and areas of higher sensitivity, which did not adapt well, in red. Areas in red typically had a hard time due to rising temperatures, loss of water and various other detrimental effects.
"In the U.K.'s natural capital report launched in October 2015, one of the key messages was the urgent need to determine a methodology to identify the most vulnerable natural capital stocks globally," Kathy Willis, co-author of the study, said in a press release. "This work provides the first step in identifying why some regions seem to be more sensitive than others and, therefore, to assessing the impacts on the resilience of ecosystems and human well-being in the face of increased climate variability."
The findings were published in the Feb. 17 issue of Nature.
