Climate change is the most serious problem we face in the 21st century. Accompanied by the rapid expansion of cities worldwide, the phenomenon of urban heat islands has become a critical environmental issue in many large cities,
Scientific understanding about the effects of afforestation on the water balance in catchment areas has been significantly enhanced by studies on the interception and evaporation of rainfall. In order to reduce severe soil erosion on the Loess Plateau, a policy of reforestation has changed land use from cropland to planted forests. However, this has been found to lead to a reduction in water yield, partly because of an increase in loss through rainfall interception by the forest canopy, which is of critical importance to the water budgets of forests. The Gash analytical model has been widely used throughout the world for estimating rainfall interception by the forest canopy. In order to verify its applicability to the Loess Plateau, we compared the modeling results of the Gash model with those of field data collected from a monoculture Robinia
Soil moisture has large impacts on agricultural production and regional ecosystems. The Loess Tableland was selected as the study area, and the characteristics of soil moisture in different land use types were measured and analyzed from March to October 2012. The objectives of this study were to characterize the dynamic changes in soil water, determine the soil moisture depletion and replenishment depths, and compare the differences in water consumption under the different land uses. The results showed that: (1) Soil moisture content recorded in the 0-600 cm layer in a 7鄄year鄄old apple orchard was the highest, followed by that in a corn field, wheat field, and a 17鄄year鄄old apple orchard. Soil moisture contents in different land use types had the same variation trends as precipitation during the observation period, but their responses lagged changes in precipitation. (2) Soil moisture variation declined with increasing soil depth in different land use types. The variation in surface soil water content was greater than that of deep soil water content because the surface layer (0-100 cm) was influenced by multiple processes, including rainfall infiltration, soil evaporation, and plant root water uptake. Soil moisture was less affected by outside conditions as soil depth increased; therefore, soil moisture tended to be relatively stable. In addition, because of complicated functions of plant growth regulation and local phenological
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