Figure 8.7

Figure 8.7: Percent of total urban land expansion from other land covers, sorted by the AR6 WGIII 10-region aggregation (1970–2010). As urban land has expanded outward, other forms of land cover, including agriculture, ‘nature’ (e.g., forest, grassland, shrubland, water, and bare soil, all of which are disaggregated to the bottom half of the plot), and other land covers, have been displaced. Globally, agriculture comprises the majority (about 60%) of the land displaced by urban expansion since 1970. Forests and shrubland vegetation – important carbon stocks – also make up a significant proportion of displacement. The loss of carbon-sequestering land like forests and shrubland independently impacts climate change by reducing global carbon stocks. Eurasia is omitted because there are no case studies from that region that report land conversion data. Source: adapted from Güneralp et al. (2020).