Effects of land use/land cover and climate changes on terrestrial net primary productivity in the Yangtze River Basin, China, from 2001 to 2010

Abstract

Land use/land cover change (LULCC) and climate change are among the primary driving forces for terrestrial ecosystem productivity, but their impacts are confounded. The objective of this paper is to decouple the effects of LULCC and climate change on terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP) in China's Yangtze River Basin (YRB) during 2001-2010 using a light use efficiency model through different scenario designs. During the study period, the YRB witnessed tremendous LULCC and climate changes. A prominent LULCC was the conversion of shrub land to forests as a result of a series of forest restoration and protection programs implemented in the basin. At the same time, notable warming and drying trends were observed based on ground and satellite measurements. Prescribed model simulations indicated that LULCC alone had a significantly positive effect on total NPP (up to 6.1 Tg C yr À1 , p < 0.01) mainly due to reforestation and forest protection, while climate change alone showed an overall negative effect in the basin (as much as À2.7 Tg C yr À1 , p = 0.11). The ensemble effect of LULCC and climate change on total NPP is approximately 3.9 Tg C yr À1 (p = 0.26) during 2001-2010. Our study provides an improved understanding of the effects of LULCC and climate change on terrestrial ecosystem productivity in the YRB. We found that reforestation and forest protection could significantly enhance terrestrial ecosystem productivity, a strategy that could mitigate global warming. It also suggests that NPP models with static land use/land cover could lead to increasingly large errors with time.

Aerosol Optical Properties and Associated Direct Radiative Forcing over the Yangtze River Basin during 2001–2015

“…Furthermore, the midstream and downstream regions of YRB and Sichuan Basin have suffered from serious air pollution caused by the industrial production, vehicular emission, straw burning and the long-distance transport of dust particles from North China in spring [8][9][10][34][35][36]. The various aerosol sources and diverse surface types make the aerosol optical and radiative characteristics over YRB more complicated [37]. Therefore, to improve the knowledge of regional aerosol-climate interactions, it is necessary to estimate the aerosol optical properties and ADREs based on the satellite-retrieved method over the entire YRB.…”

Projecting water yield and ecosystem productivity across the United States by linking an ecohydrological model to WRF dynamically downscaled climate data

“…Hydrology and ecosystems can be influenced significantly by human activities on various temporal and spatial scales (Foley et al, 2005;Harding et al, 2011). Hydraulic projects such as dam constructions, reservoir management (Hu et al, 2008), groundwater withdrawals for irrigation and domestic use, and land use/cover change all affect watershed balances (Foley et al, 2005;Piao et al, 2007;Wang and Hejazi, 2011;Schilling et al, 2008) and ecosystem productivity (Zhang, Y. et al, 2014).…”

“…Climate change affects vegetation dormancy onset date, timing of bud burst, net primary production (NPP), gross primary production (GPP), and ecosystem respiration (Nemani et al, 2003;Scholze et al, 2006;Pennington and Collins, 2007;Anderson-Teixeira et al, 2011;Gang et al, 2013;Peng et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2013;Williams et al, 2014;Piao et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2015). In addition, future water cycle and ecosystems are affected by the combined forces from natural environment (e.g., climate and land surface properties) and socio-economics (e.g., economic development and population increases) (Cox et al, 2000;Somerville and Briscoe, 2001;Sitch et al, 2008;Alkama et al, 2013;Piontek et al, 2014;Schewe et al, 2014;Zhang, Y. et al, 2014;Aparício et al, 2015).…”

Effects of Climate Change and LUCC on Terrestrial Biomass in the Lower Heihe River Basin during 2001–2010

“…Climate change and land use and land cover change (LUCC) are primary driving forces for biomass accumulation in terrestrial ecosystems [17][18][19][20], and assessing their relative contribution to biomass accumulation change is critical for finding ways of guaranteeing provision of ecosystem services and planning strategies to mitigate the accumulation of CO 2 in the atmosphere [15]. Climate change and LUCC can influence the biomass accumulation of vegetation through influencing the fraction of radiation intercepted, radiation use efficiency and harvest index [12,[21][22][23], and they can also lead to the shifts in the overall structure and function of ecosystems and consequently influence partition of energy fluxes and ecosystem energy balance and result in changes in biomass [24].…”

“…By contrast, scenario analysis with process-based terrestrial ecosystem models can reflect the effects of influencing factors on biomass accumulation in a spatially explicit way and is often proposed as a simple, rapid and sensitive method to study effects of environmental changes on the photosynthesis and biomass accumulation [5,38,39]. However, current research with scenario analysis has generally focused on influence of climate change and land conversion (LC), with little attention paid to the fractional vegetation cover change (FVCC) which may have more important influence on biomass accumulation at microscopic scales [15,17,[40][41][42].…”