Climate land use and other drivers' impacts on island ecosystem services: A global review

Abstract

Islands are diversity hotspots and vulnerable to environmental degradation, climate variations, land use changes and societal crises. These factors can exhibit interactive impacts on ecosystem services. The study reviewed a large number of papers on the climate change-islands-ecosystem services topic worldwide. Potential inclusion of land use changes and other drivers of impacts on ecosystem services were sequentially also recorded. The study sought to investigate the impacts of climate change, land use change, and other non-climatic driver changes on island ecosystem services. Explanatory variables examined were divided into two categories: environmental variables and methodological ones. Environmental variables include sea zone geographic location, ecosystem, ecosystem services, climate, land use, other driver variables, Methodological variables include consideration of policy interventions, uncertainty assessment, cumulative effects of climate change, synergistic effects of climate change with land use change and other anthropogenic and environmental drivers, and the diversity of variables used in the analysis. Machine learning and statistical methods were used to analyze their effects on island ecosystem services. Negative climate change impacts on ecosystem services are better quantified by land use change or other non-climatic driver variables than by climate variables. The synergy of land use together with climate changes is modulating the impact outcome and critical for a better impact assessment. Analyzed together, there is little evidence of more pronounced effects for a specific sea zone, ecosystem, or ecosystem service. Climate change impacts may be underestimated due to the use of a single climate variable deployed in most studies. Policy interventions exhibit low classification accuracy in quantifying impacts indicating insufficient efficacy or integration in the studies.