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and human well-being is often scarce, exposure indicators are taken as proxies for effects. Responses are described in terms of policies and actions, including voluntary actions, where officially documented, that are directly targeted toward improving the environment as well as those which target relevant contextual factors. Given the irreducible nature of many of the uncertainties associated with these and existing knowledge gaps in causal linkages and data gaps, the estimates of impacts and trends presented in the following section have been confined to those issues which can be plausibly linked on the basis of best available evidence.


30: Permafrost degradation


Permafrost presently underlies nearly 25 per cent of the exposed land area of the northern hemisphere (Zhang et al. 2008). Under warmer climatic conditions much of this terrain would be vulnerable to subsidence, particularly in ice-rich areas of relatively warm, discontinuous permafrost (Osterkamp et al. 2000). Because most exchange of energy, moisture and gases between the atmospheric and terrestrial systems occurs through the permafrost’s active layer, thickening of this layer as warming exposes more surface and activates deeper layers will most likely have important effects on geomorphic, hydrological and biological processes, and may have severe destabilizing effects on landforms, vegetation and inadequately constructed infrastructures (Smith and Burgess 1999).


General circulation model-based studies show the area of the northern hemisphere occupied by permafrost could eventually be reduced quite substantially in a warmer climate (Smith and Burgess 1999; Anisimov and Nelson 1996) – for example, Stendel and Christensen (2002) estimate a 30–40 per cent increase in active layer thickness by 2080s (Figure-L2 11) for most of the permafrost area in the northern hemisphere under certain Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios, with the largest relative increases concentrated in the northernmost locations. Permafrost thaw can provide a feedback on climate, triggering the release of additional amounts of greenhouse gases such as methane (Michaelson et al. 1996).


212


Figure-L2 11: Temperature changes (°C) in boreal winter (December, January, February) in the lowermost model soil layer (5.7 meters) for the period 2071–2100 compared to the period 1961–1990


Source: Stendel and Christensen 2002 31:


Relative sea level rise at selected pan-European tide- gauge stations (1970-2012)


Figure-L2 12 shows the geographical coverage of tide gauge measurements to the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL), as well as the trend in relative sea level.


32: Desertification and soil degradation


Soil degradation processes occurring in the EU include erosion, organic matter decline, compaction, salinisation, landslides, contamination, sealing, and biodiversity decline (Montanarella and Tóth 2007). The adoption of the EU’s Thematic Strategy for Soil (EC 2007a) formally recognized the severity of the soil and land degradation processes within the EU and its bordering countries. Available information suggests that, over recent decades, there has been a considerable increase in soil degradation driven or


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