Climate Change Impacts on the Water Resources and Vegetation Dynamics of a Forested Sardinian Basin through a Distributed Ecohydrological Model

Abstract

Climate change is impacting Mediterranean basins, bringing warmer climate conditions. The Marganai forest is a natural forest protected under the European Site of Community Importance (Natura 2000), located in Sardinia, an island in the western Mediterranean basin, which is part of the Fluminimaggiore basin. Recent droughts have strained the forest′s resilience. A long-term hydrological database collected from 1922 to 2021 shows that the Sardinian forested basin has been affected by climate change since the middle of the last century, associated with a decrease in winter precipitation and annual runoff, reduced by half in the last century, and an increase of ~1 °C in the mean annual air temperature. A simplified model that couples a hydrological model and a vegetation dynamics model for long-term ecohydrological predictions in water-limited basins is proposed. The model well predicted almost one century of runoff observations. Trees have suffered from the recent warmer climate conditions, with a tree leaf area index (LAI) decreasing systematically due to the air temperature and a vapor pressure deficit (VPD) rise at a rate of 0.1 hPa per decade. Future climate scenarios of the HadGEM2-AO climate model are predicting even warmer conditions in the Sardinian forested basin, with less annual precipitation and higher air temperatures and VPD. Using these climate scenarios, we predicted a further decrease in runoff and tree transpiration and LAI in the basin, with a reduction of tree LAI by half in the next century. Although the annual runoff decreases drastically in the worst scenarios (up to 26%), runoff extremes will increase in severity, outlining future scenarios that are drier and warmer but, at the same time, with an increased flood frequency. The future climate conditions undermine the forest’s sustainability and need to be properly considered in water resources and forest management plans.

Spatiotemporal Changes in Water Yield Function and Its Influencing Factors in the Tibetan Plateau in the Past 20 Years

“…Moreover, the differences and regular characteristics of water yield functions under the influence of different topographic landforms are ignored [31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. At the same time, studies have shown that the water conservation function is the result of soil-vegetation-atmosphere system interaction, which is affected by multiple factors, such as the climate, vegetation, soil, and human activities, and the attention given to the coupling effect of climate elements and vegetation cover changes on water conservation should be strengthened [38][39][40]. In view of this, this paper calculated the water yield of the Tibetan Plateau in the past 20 years through the InVEST model and combined the topographic factors to explore the driving effect on the spatiotemporal changes in the water yield of the Tibetan Plateau from the perspective of climate change and vegetation change; we then explored the distribution characteristics and regularities of the water yield under the comprehensive action, in order to deeply understand the current and future evolution patterns of the water yield of the Tibetan Plateau.…”