Northern Wilderness Could Turn to Farmland as Climate Warms

Agriculture is the primary driver of forest and habitat loss worldwide. Some wilderness areas in northern climates have begun to be more suitable for agriculture due to global heating, and this is increasing the risk of agricultural expansion, putting ecosystems at risk.

A new study by researchers from the University of Exeter shows that humans must use farmland more efficiently and reduce carbon emissions to protect Earth’s remaining wilderness, a press release from University of Exeter said.

Wilderness areas in Scandinavia, Canada and Russia are particularly at risk.

“Only a few areas of our planet remain relatively untouched by human influence,” said professor Ilya Maclean of the Environment and Sustainability Institute at University of Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall, in the press release. “By warming our planet, we are simultaneously making existing farmland less productive and opening possible new areas for farming, especially in the far north. Without protection, these precious areas of wilderness – with their great biodiversity and cultural value – could be irreversibly lost.”

The study assessed the “future climate suitability” of more than 1,700 crops and found that more than one million square miles of wilderness — seven percent of the total remaining wilderness left in the world outside of Antarctica — will become suitable for agriculture in the next four decades.

“We expected that warming temperatures would increase agricultural suitability at high latitudes, but the scale of this result, and the extent to which this newly suitable land is in wilderness, was surprising: 76% of newly suitable land at high latitudes is currently wilderness, equivalent to 10% of the total wilderness in these areas,” said lead author of the study Alexandra Gardner, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Exeter who is also from the Environment and Sustainability Institute, as Earth.com reported.

The study also said the variety of crops will drop on 72 percent of the planet’s currently cultivable land, which will exacerbate the pressure to expand agriculture into wilderness areas, the press release said.

“We need to understand the specific impacts of different agricultural practices on biodiversity,” Gardner said, according to Earth.com. “An important step is knowing how we can maintain or improve crop yields on existing agricultural land using sustainable practices that do not harm or minimize the negative impacts on natural biodiversity.”

The study, “Wilderness areas under threat from global redistribution of agriculture,” was published in the journal Current Biology.

Agricultural expansion is the main cause of terrestrial biodiversity loss on Earth. Complicating the problem is that it may be necessary to double global food production by 2050 in order to meet the needs of a growing human population, the press release said.

“To protect our planet’s remaining wilderness, we must urgently cut emissions of greenhouse gases,” Gardner said in the press release. “We must also use our farmland more efficiently. We can feed a larger population on the farmland we already have, but we need to increase cropping efficiency, grow the right crops for the conditions, reduce meat consumption (which is inefficient and produces high emissions) and cut food waste.”

The researchers based their projection of how much wilderness will be newly suitable for farming in 40 years on a “high-emissions future (the RCP8.5 climate scenario),” which is the highest baseline emissions scenario. Using the RCP4.5 “medium scenario,” the newly available areas would total approximately 710,000 square miles.

“What we’ve seen over the last 50 years is a shift toward extensive large fields and monocultures. It’s much cheaper for a farmer to produce crops that way. But if you grow a single crop on your farm, you’re more susceptible to the uncertainties of climate change,” Maclean said, as reported by Earth.com. “What we’ll be seeing is parts of the last untouched places on the planet becoming more suited for agriculture.”