What biome is the most vulnerable to climate change?
A biome is typically a large ecosystem that shares common environmental characteristics that help differentiate them from other ecosystems/biomes. An example is the temperate rainforests of Tasmania, which are a distinct biome compared to tropical rainforests found in Queensland.
Almost all biomes are vulnerable to climate change. The nature and extent of this vulnerability changes across biomes, and also across different parts of world that have varying levels of other human induced threats. Some of these other threats include things like land clearing, introduced species and altered fire management practices. These threats can act cumulatively along with a changing climate to increase the vulnerability of that biome over and above what can be attributable to climate change. For example, climate change increases the vulnerability of temperate rainforests of Tasmania to fire, but this vulnerability can be further increased with certain forms of land use changes, such as with forestry and changed fire regimes.
My work is focussed on the wetlands biome, which is also highly vulnerable to climate change combined with other human impacts. In one recent example in Moulting Lagoon on the east coast of Tasmania, a large extent of wetland plants died due most likely to unusually high rainfall in 2022, the highest record of total rainfall for the last 62 years. Similar losses due to such ‘freak weather’ events are being reported from biomes across the world, further highlighting the need to take more urgent and stronger action on climate change.
