Potential Forest Distribution over the South Siberian and North Mongolian Mountains Related to Predicted Climate Change by the Midcentury

The South Siberian and North Mongolian Mountains have enormous forests potential; however, more and more territories of forests disturbed by cutting and fire appeared during the late twenty years. One more negative phenomenon has been observed in unique dark-needle forests across the South Siberian Mountains: massive dieback of dark-needled forests that was related to climate aridization by many researchers. Our goal was to study predicted climate change impacts on the montane vegetation (altitudinal vegetation belts, AVB) transformation in a changing climate across the South Siberian and North Mongolian Mountains (window 48°–58° N and 80°–120° E). We based on outputs of the general circulation model the of the Computing Mathematics Institute, RAS (INM-CM5-0) and recent climate change scenarios (IPCC 2022) at 2050: the moderate ssp126 and extreme ssp585. Predictions of climate anomalies at 2050 were July temperatures 2– 5°С, January temperature 1–4°С and annual precipitation 50–125 mm. According to this climate change, potential AVB may undergo transformation as follows: tundra, subalpine and “podgolets” open forest (under bare uplands) would significantly shrink; montane taiga would shrink 1.7-fold from the moderate scenario and 2.3-fold from the extreme scenario. Dark-needled AVB would remain on the same areas at the expense of subalpine AVB. Potential forest space including forest-tundra and forest-steppe ecotones would change insignificantly: would not change under the moderate scenario and would 10% decrease under the extreme scenario. Forest-steppe AVB would twice increase at the expense of light-needled AVB. One third of foreststeppe would favor broad-leaved forest-steppe. Steppe and semidesert would extend.

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