Hello,

I guess, even in the dry areas, that the soil (especially for rangelands with a vegetation cover) is really usefull for the capture and the sequestration of the carbon. The main problem with the conversion into cropland is the release of the sequestred carbon in the atmosphere, which leads to an increase of the greenhouse gases and impact the climate.

Article Effects of large-scale changes in land cover on the discharg...

Article Global Consequences of Land Use

In dry range lands conversion into agriculture will have major impact on climate change as they are contributing less in carbon sequestration. Their conversion into agriculture may put intensive management practices and more energy utilisation in that land which may have more carbon footprints. and some extent the arid ecology of the areas will change with intensive agricultural practices which in long run will have impact on climate.

Land use change always effect the climate as if the urbanization increases it reduces the vegetative and agriculture part on the land cover and hence there is a increment in the temperature which result in hot days and warmer nights during summers.

Understanding the interactive and cumulative effects of climate and land-use changes are a priority for the NE CSC as it will affect the distribution, composition, condition and vulnerability of regional biomass including forests, grasslands, shrub lands, prairies, alpine tundra, and human managed systems (e.g. agricultural lands and forestry)

Climate change generally occurs in a geological time scale as it is realized in peninsular India during the Holocene period from humid to semi-arid climate. Such change has caused natural chemical degradation of soils due to regressive pedogenesis. Obviously the present land use is the effect of such unfavourable climate change. This is an example how climate change affects crop productivity and agricultural land uses.

Forests we are told are the lungs that breath in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. If the land use results in less vegetation, trees included, there will be mechanism for the breathing in of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere. This by implication, means we have reduced mechanism for reducing the carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere. High amounts of carbon dioxide leads to providing the base for trapping heat, causing atmospheric temperatures to rise, and a changed climate.

From my own observation in southern Italy this past summer while conducting research there, biomass burning is an immediate and dramatic short-term climate change cause. This past summer there was a combination of three deliberate use of burning of biomass. First was traditional field burning of two kinds. The first was the monitored burning of chaff after the wheat harvest, by older farmers, who carefully watched the windrows burn, and made sure that it was done on calm days when they could prevent the fires from spreading. Then there was a second kind that I observed in which gasoline was dumped on the wheat chaff, vegetation along roads into riparian vegetation in ditches and streams (with fully grown trees). This was set ablaze and the young men who started the fires fled the scene. This was conducted on windy days, and I saw fires burn out of control burning whole hillsides of native Macchia as well as fields, olive orchards, vineyards, and whole riparian habitats. This modern approach to field burning seems to be the norm among younger farmers in Basilicata and Puglia. Then there were the fires set by the Mafia around Milan to extort ransom from rich landowners and others who lived near native vegetation areas. Every time I passed by Naples this summer the air was filled with acrid smoke. This intentional burning was so uncontrolled that even two thirds of the vegetation on Mt Vesuvius was burned off. And the third kind of burning was by out of work firefighters who needed work. In Sicily some 15 were arrested for starting these fires. All of these kinds of intentional fire setting destroyed vegetation and contributed vast amounts of black carbon to the atmosphere. https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/08/black-carbon-and-climate-change/ My colleagues at the Desert Research Institute, Monica Arienzo ([email protected]), Joe McConnell, and Nathan Chellman, have been examining the link between the record of black carbon in ice cores and lakes to climate change. https://www.dri.edu/newsroom/news-releases/5551-black-carbon-emissions-from-ancient-wildfires-linked-to-historical-climate-conditions. In my own research in southern Italy, I have been able to link charcoal records in Lake Pergusa, Sicily, with cycles of increased summer rainfall and erosion cycles in Basilicata and Puglia regions of the Mezzogiorno. Changes in the albedo of the earth's surface due to forest clearance have also been lined to changes in solar insolation and climate change as well. http://nabc.cals.cornell.edu/Publications/Reports/nabc_21/21_2_2_Dejardins.pdf. These two kinds of land use impacts are among the most immediate and dramatic impacts of land use on climate change. There are others.

In rangelands with low plant cover, increasing vegetation cover will be of a positive effect in improvement the surrounding climate, increase Oxygen production and carbon dioxide consumption. So, if the dry areas (rangelands) is used for planting (may be under irrigation) it will be affecting climate change positively.

If you have the water....we can see that hasn't worked in the Orūmiye Lake Basin, where the lake is now totally dry...in the middle of winter on both sides of the causeway crossing it (see video below). It looks like this on both sides of the causeway, according to my friend who sent this video. That brings up another impact of land use on climate change. Lake Orūyime has now become a point source for dust in the region. It is increasing the albedo of the region, and creating cancer clusters among the populations down wind of the lake, e.g., Tabriz. This will be an increasing issue as long as water is withdrawn from large lake basins like Lake Orūmiye, even in the U.S., where Owens Lake has been the largest point source for dust in North America due to water withdrawal for Southern California. We have to balance what is being done with our resources. We all share a responsibility to develop programs of land use that make sense for the region in which they are applied. The photos I took at Lake Orūyime in June of 2015 while walking on the salt crust at the northwest shore of the lake. The photo of the dust storm was taken in Savah, just 75 km southwest of Tehran. This storm originated in Iraq, but picked up dust throughout its path and eventually passed through Tehran as well. They experienced numerous dust storms there during the last few years. In Savah, the qanat system that has been supplying the area with water since antiquity, is now dry...there is no more water to supply it. Finally check this website out to see the scale of the dust issue.... go to the website and hit the play button. http://forecast.uoa.gr/LINKS/DUST/dust.php?field=dconc&lan=en

You can look at dust in the entire region from North America to East Asia. You can compare images seasonally to see the scale of the problem. There have been times during the last three years where dust from North Africa has spread into the Great :Plains of the U.S.

The simple truth in all these is that the absence of vegetation enhances global warming as carbon will not be taken up by the green plants for photosynthesis. As a consequence, carbon dioxide (carbon combined with oxygen) will be available in the atmosphere.

Once this gets to the level at which it cannot be absorbed, the excess will get out and destroy the Ozone layer and the consequences will be visited on mother earth with the disastrous consequences of global warming and of course climate change.

It is desirable and practicable therefore that we as much as possible allow vegetation cover in all our fields and go for the non destruction of our forests..

basically change in land use will cause change in the nature of albedo. Global climate and vegetation responses are generally considered as the existing climatic zones, when land use changes, it affects the balancing mechanism or preexisting condition that contribute to the exchange of energy get affected and result in the climate the climate change.