More than 80% of the world's ice-free lands are at risk of profound ecosystem transformation by 2100, a new study reveals. “We would essentially leave the world as we know it,” says Sebastian Ostberg of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Ostberg and collaborators have studied the critical impacts of climate change on landscapes and have now published their findings in Earth System Dynamics, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). The researchers say in the paper that “almost no area of ​​the world is exempt” from the risk of climate change substantially transforming landscapes, unless mitigation limits warming to about 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Ecosystem changes could include the transformation of boreal forests into temperate savannas, trees growing in the frozen Arctic tundra, or even the dieback of some of the world's rainforests. Such profound transformations of Earth's ecosystems have the potential to affect food and water security, and thus impact human well-being just as sea level rise and direct damage from extreme weather do....