Abstract/Summary

Climate and land use change are the two main drivers of biodiversity loss worldwide. Forests, particularly tropical forests, host a disproportionate amount of terrestrial biodiversity. However, there remains a substantial research bias towards temperate regions and Amazonia when assessing the joint impacts of climate and land use change. Climate and land use change have been shown to interact, leading to complex and unexpected ecological responses, as such this bias could be leading to a misrepresentation of the threats to tropical forests across Asia and Africa. India, a country not previously considered, presents a unique opportunity to explore the potential for interactions between the two drivers. India is predicted to experience increases in temperature, variable rainfall and prevalence of extreme events, at the same time as rapid population expansion. Analysis of forest trends in the country were prevalent in the 1990’s and the primary driver of loss was agricultural expansion. However, there are substantial knowledge gaps including the recent trends in forest change and the current primary driver of forest loss. Additionally, the effects of climate change on forests in the country have been largely overlooked. This thesis uses global datasets and mixed modelling approaches to explore the effects of climate change, land use change and their interactions across India during 1995- 2019. Results show, for the first time, that climate change has played a role in forest loss in India, however, the predominant driver of forest loss remains agricultural-driven land use changes. This research provides the first evidence of a synergistic interaction between drought and land use change in the country, where the two drivers are leading to a greater area of forest loss. This research aslo significantly contributes to the increased knowledge of the drivers of forest loss in India and highlights a concerning interaction that is predicted to worsen with time. These results have key implications for future management of the forests, which do not currently take climate change into account, and highlight that interactions between climate and land use change are occurring in Asian tropical forests.