Future Land Use/Land Cover Change Has Nontrivial and Potentially Dominant Impact on Global Gross Primary Productivity

Anthropogenic land use/land cover (LULC) change alters terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP), the largest land-atmosphere carbon exchanges. Identifying the impacts of LULC changes on future terrestrial GPP has been challenging due to the scarcity of standardized future LULC for ecosystem models. Here, we present eight scenario-based projections of global spatially explicit LULC at 1-km resolution over the period 2015–2100 with a Future Land Use Simulation model—consistent with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Representative Concentration Pathways. Twenty computational experiments with different LULC patterns, climate forcing, and CO₂ concentrations were conducted to quantify their contributions to future GPP dynamics. Results show that the global terrestrial GPP would decline in the 21st century in most LULC scenarios due to urbanization, agricultural expansion, and deforestation. Moreover, the contribution of LULC changes to global GPP dynamics ranges from 3.43% to 10.78% when CO₂ fertilization effect (CFE) is not modeled during 2000–2100 (7%–9% of the terrestrial area is dominated by LULC change). However, this value may range from 10.92% to 16.16% during 2000–2050 and 1.41%–14.57% during 2050–2100. The contribution of LULC even reached 56.08% during 2050–2100 in Southeast Asia due to deforestation. Despite the relatively important role of LULC to GPP dynamics, it becomes trivial globally when incorporating CFE into the model (i.e., LULC accounts for 1.24%–2.51% during 2000–2100). Our findings emphasize the strategic role of CFE in enhancing global GPP and highlight the quantitatively nontrivial role of LULC at the regional scale.