Do Ecological Restoration Projects Improve Water-Related Ecosystem Services? Evidence from a Study in the Hengduan Mountain Region

Abstract

Land use/land cover (LULC) and climate change are major driving forces that impact ecosystem services and affect human well-being directly and indirectly. Under the future interaction between LULC and climate change, the impact of different land management and climate change scenarios on water-related services is uncertain. Based on this, the CLUMondo model, which focuses on land use intensity, was used to simulate the land system under different land management scenarios in the future. By coupling the downscaled climate scenario data, this study used the InVEST and RUSLE models to estimate the annual water yield and soil erosion in 2050 in the Hengduan Mountain region and analyzed the variation differences in different sub-watersheds. The results indicated that, under the influence of LULC and climate change, when compared with the amount for 2020, the soil erosion in the Hengduan Mountain region in 2050 was reduced by 1.83, 3.40, and 2.91% under the TREND scenario, FOREST scenario, and CONSERVATION scenario, respectively, while the water yield decreased by 5.05, 5.37, and 5.21%, respectively. Moreover, the change in soil erosion in the study area was affected by precipitation and closely related to the precipitation intensity, and the impact of climate change on the water yield was significantly greater than that of LULC change. The spatial heterogeneity of soil erosion and water yield was obvious at the sub-watershed scale. In the future, soil erosion control should be strengthened in the northern regions, while water resource monitoring and early warning should be emphasized in the central-eastern regions. Our results provide scientific guidance for policy makers to formulate better LULC policies to achieve regional water and soil balance and sustainable management.

Attribution and Sensitivity Analysis of Runoff Variation in the Yellow River Basin under Climate Change

“…More and more scholars have begun to pay attention to the multi-faceted response and the change of water resources in the context of climate change. A large number of studies have shown that climate change has brought new challenges to the water environment, which may be affected by changing water quantity, quality and aquatic biodiversity [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Studies on the impact of climate change on water environment have been conducted holding that global warming will cause a series of water quality problems, such as eutrophication, which is mainly manifested by algae increase and nutrient circulation acceleration [19][20][21][22][23].…”

Effects of climate and land use changes on water ecosystem services: understanding the mitigating effect of green land use scenarios

“…Similar to other research examining the impacts of climate and LULC changes on watershed hydrology GUO et al, 2021;YIN et al, 2022), this study underscores the pronounced influence of climate change on water supply.…”

Stakeholder-Driven Policies and Scenarios of Land System Change and Environmental Impacts: A Case Study of Owyhee County, Idaho, United States

“…This study is conducted with a framework that integrates the land system change modeling and ecosystem services modeling [31,[40][41][42]. As shown in Figure 2, the first part builds qualitative scenarios by interviews and workshops with an indicative group of 12 stakeholders representing farmers, landowners, county, state, and federal government, and rangeland associations stakeholders [43].…”