Interconnections: Greenhouse Gas Pollution, Climate Change, and Land Use Change

Abstract

Since the close of the Pleistocene, humans have altered the planet through, in part, agriculture, settlement, and industrial activities. This alteration has accelerated in the last century to the point that we have transformed basic natural environmental systems and we now live in a changed time called the Anthropocene. One of the most important cycles that we have altered is the carbon cycle which is partially responsible for regulating our temperature on the planet. Due to the burning of fossil fuels, we now have more carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere than in any other time in human history. Climate scientists predict that temperatures will increase in the coming decades and that there will be concomitant changes to the land surface that involve rising sea levels, greater temperature fluctuations, and altered ecosystems. Three case studies from the small island states of the Pacific, from Midwestern cities of United States, and from Madagascar and Mozambique are presented that show that we are already feeling the impacts of climate change.