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Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry
 
 
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"Land use
Land use

Land use is the human modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as fields, pastures, and settlements. The major effect of land use on land cover since 1750 has been deforestation of temperate regions....
, land-use change and forestry
Forestry

Forestry is the art and science of managing forests, tree plantations, and related natural resources. Silviculture, a related science, involves the growing and tending of trees and forests....
 (LULUCF)" is defined by the UN Climate Change Secretariat as "A greenhouse gas inventory sector that covers emissions and removals of greenhouse gases resulting from direct human-induced land use, land-use change and forestry activities." LULUCF has impacts on the global carbon cycle
Carbon cycle

The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and Earth's atmosphere of the Earth....
 and as such these activities can add or remove carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalent bond to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state....
 (or, more generally, carbon
Carbon

Carbon is a chemical element with chemical symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalence?making four electrons available to form covalent bond chemical bonds....
) from the atmosphere, contributing to climate change
Climate change

Climate change is any long-term significant change in the expected patterns of average weather of a specific region over an appropriately significant period of time....
.






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"Land use
Land use

Land use is the human modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as fields, pastures, and settlements. The major effect of land use on land cover since 1750 has been deforestation of temperate regions....
, land-use change and forestry
Forestry

Forestry is the art and science of managing forests, tree plantations, and related natural resources. Silviculture, a related science, involves the growing and tending of trees and forests....
 (LULUCF)" is defined by the UN Climate Change Secretariat as "A greenhouse gas inventory sector that covers emissions and removals of greenhouse gases resulting from direct human-induced land use, land-use change and forestry activities." LULUCF has impacts on the global carbon cycle
Carbon cycle

The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and Earth's atmosphere of the Earth....
 and as such these activities can add or remove carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalent bond to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state....
 (or, more generally, carbon
Carbon

Carbon is a chemical element with chemical symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalence?making four electrons available to form covalent bond chemical bonds....
) from the atmosphere, contributing to climate change
Climate change

Climate change is any long-term significant change in the expected patterns of average weather of a specific region over an appropriately significant period of time....
. LULUCF has been the subject of two major reports by the IPCC. Additionally, land use is of critical importance for biodiversity
Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or for the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems....
.

Climatic impacts of land-use, land-use change and forestry

Land-use change is a large source of CO2 and is thus an important contributor to climate change. IPCC estimates that land-use change (e.g. conversion of forest into agricultural land) contributes a net 1.6 ± 0.8 Gt carbon per year to the atmosphere. For comparison, the major source of CO2, namely emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production amount to 6.3 ± 0.6 Gt carbon per year.

IPCC also states that from 1850 to 1998, about 136 (+ 55) Gt carbon has been emitted as a result of land-use change, predominantly from forest ecosystems. For comparison, 270 (+ 30) Gt carbon has been emitted as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning and cement production.

Land use and biodiversity

The extent, and type of land use directly affects wildlife
Wildlife

Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals, and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative....
 habitat
Habitat

The term habitat has a number of meanings:* Habitat , a place where a species lives and grows** Human habitat, a place where humans live, work or play...
 and thereby impacts local and global biodiversity. Human alteration of landscapes from natural vegetation (e.g. wilderness
Wilderness

Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet - those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with roads, pipelines or other industrial i...
) to any other use typically results in habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation
Habitat fragmentation

Habitat fragmentation is a process of Natural environmental change important in evolution and conservation biology. As the name implies, it describes the emergence of discontinuities in an organism's preferred environment ....
, all of which can have devastating effects on biodiversity. Land conversion is the single greatest cause of extinction
Extinction

In biology and ecology, extinction is the death of every member of a species or group of taxon. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species ....
 of terrestrial
Terrestrial animal

Terrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land, as compared with aquatic animals, which live predominantly or entirely in the water , or amphibians, which rely on a combination of aquatic and terrestrial habitats ....
 species.

Of particular concern is deforestation
Deforestation

Deforestation is the logging or burning of trees in forested areas. There are several reasons for doing so: trees or derived charcoal can be sold as a commodity and are used by humans while cleared land is used as pasture, plantations of commodities and human settlement....
, where logging or burning are followed by the conversion of the land to agriculture or other land uses. Even if some forests are left standing, the resulting fragmented landscape
Forest fragmentation

Forest fragmentation is a form of habitat fragmentation, occurring when forests are cut down in a manner that leaves relatively small, isolated patches of forest known as forest fragments or forest remnants....
 typically fails to support many species that previously existed there.