Quantifying Impacts of Forest Recovery on Water Yield in Two Large Watersheds in the Cold Region of Northeast China

Duan, Liangliang; Cai, Tijiu

doi:10.3390/f9070392

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…Forest water consumption increased gradually due to the increased biomass under the current forest management policies and rapid climate warming. If precipitation does not increase or become stable in the future, the reduction of annual water yield due to global warming forest regrowth is likely to cause stress of water demand for irrigation and wetlands in downstream [32,73]. In addition, our result indicated that the watersheds covered by primitive larch forests had a lower high flows and flood risk as compared with deciduous conifer broad-leaved mixed forests.…”

Section: Implications and Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 74%

Water Yield Responses to Gradual Changes in Forest Structure and Species Composition in a Subboreal Watershed in Northeastern China

Sun

Cai

et al. 2019

Forests

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Relationships between forest cover and streamflow have been studied worldwide, but only a few studies have examined how gradual changes in forest structure and species composition due to logging and climate change affect watershed water yield (Q) and flow regimes. In this study, we analyzed long-term (45 years) hydrologic, climate and forest dynamics data from the subboreal Tahe watershed in northeastern China. Our purpose was to evaluate the effects of forest logging and regeneration on changes in forest biomass and species and to quantify the subsequent impact on mean annual streamflow and flow regime under a changing climate. The study watershed was dominated by old-growth larch (Larix gmelinii Rupr.) during the 1970s, but gradually transformed into young deciduous larch mixed with deciduous broad-leaved birch (Betula platyphylla Sukaczev) during the 2010s. During the same period, the watershed experienced climate change with a significant increase in air temperature of 0.028 ℃/year. We applied eight sensitivity-based techniques to separate the effects of climate change on water yield from those due to forest changes. We used flow duration curves (FDCs) to characterize flow regimes by dividing the study into four key periods based on the proportional change of larch and birch trees. We found that the mean annual streamflow decreased by 10 mm (−16 mm attributed to forest change and +6 mm to climate change) between the 1984–1994 period and the 2006–2016 period when the proportion of birch increased by 20% with a similar total forest volume in the later period. The mean annual streamflow increased from 216 mm to 270 mm (+35.5 mm due to forest change vs +17.7 mm due to climate change) when forest volume decreased by 18.7% (17 m3/ha) between the 1970s and 1984–1994. Water yield changed only slightly (3.5 mm) when forest volume increased by 8.7% (6 m3/ha) from 2000 to 2011. In addition, the magnitude of high flow and low flow increased following deforestation and a shift in species composition from a period (1984–1994) with 70% larch with 30% birch to a later period (2006–2016) with 50% larch with 50% birch. Both high flow and low flow decreased coinciding with a reforestation period (2006–2016). Our results highlight complex interactions among climate, forest structure, total biomass, and plant diversity (trees species composition) in influencing watershed hydrology. Further study is needed to examine the effects of ecohydrological processes such as evapotranspiration in larch and birch forests on hydrologic changes across multiple scales.

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Section: Implications and Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 74%

Water Yield Responses to Gradual Changes in Forest Structure and Species Composition in a Subboreal Watershed in Northeastern China

Sun

Cai

et al. 2019

Forests

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“…Of the 15 papers we deemed appropriate for this review, one of the studies took place in Argentina, ten took place in China, two in Ethiopia, one in Wales, and one in the USA (Table 1) [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]. The large-scale restorations occurred in a variety of habitat types.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It can also be the case, however, that some ecosystem services decline in value. Three of the studies highlighted in this review from China showed that ecosystem variables reflecting water yield decreased since restoration efforts (Table 1, [40,41,43]). Water yield at the local scale may not benefit from landscape-scale restoration; however, increased evapotranspiration from restoration at these local scales will favor the cross-continental transport of moisture vapor and thus, increased precipitation in locations distant from the ocean-based hydrological cycle [95].…”

Section: How Landscape-scale Restoration Can Be Used To Improve Ecosymentioning

confidence: 96%

Restoration at the landscape scale as a means of mitigation and adaptation to climate change

Holle

Yelenik

Gornish

2020

Curr Landscape Ecol Rep

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Purpose of Review Although landscape-scale restoration efforts are gaining traction worldwide, their success is generally unknown. We review landscape-scale restorations to gain insight to whether focal ecological outcomes have been achieved, in the face of changing environmental conditions. Recent Findings Only 9% of the 477 articles that resulted from our search were studies of landscape-scale restorations. The majority (73%) of the landscape restorations from our study have occurred since the 1990s, indicating that this type of restoration has gained in popularity in the last 30 years. Furthermore, 67% of these restoration studies occurred in a single country: China. Many scientific studies have addressed the ability of a species to shift ranges with climate change, yet few of the landscape-scale restoration studies used for our study addressed this question. Instead, 87% of the studies focused on ecosystem function, rather than community-level processes, as a result of restoration. Summary There is a clear need for more research to be undertaken on the ecological outcomes of landscape-scale restorations to understand whether they enable species and communities to shift their ranges or adapt to climate change. Conservation practitioners could utilize our decision matrix as a tool to guide restoration of individual sites within a landscape context, as well as current and future climatic conditions, to guide ecological outcomes of interest. Optimal biodiversity maintenance requires habitat conservation in concert with restoration activities at the landscape scale, and the latter, likely increasingly so in a world of changing climate.

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“…The accumulated snowmelt air temperature refers to the sum of the temperature over 0 °C during the snowmelt period. We acknowledge that there may be some spatial heterogeneity in precipitation across both watersheds but we believe this heterogeneity to be minimal because the study region is mainly characterized by low hills with gentle undulations [29]. In order to test such inference, the…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The accumulated snowmelt air temperature refers to the sum of the temperature over 0 • C during the snowmelt period. We acknowledge that there may be some spatial heterogeneity in precipitation across both watersheds but we believe this heterogeneity to be minimal because the study region is mainly characterized by low hills with gentle undulations [29]. In order to test such inference, the annual gridded precipitation data in both watersheds from a separate database, "0.5 • × 0.5 • gridded database of annual surface precipitation in China" [30], have been used to test the accuracy of the precipitation data obtained from both climate stations.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in Magnitude and Timing of High Flows in Large Rain-Dominated Watersheds in the Cold Region of North-Eastern China

Duan

Cai

2018

Water

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Global warming-induced earlier streamflow timing and changes in flood risk have been widely reported in snow-dominated regions where the land surface hydrology is dominated by winter snow accumulation and spring melt. However, impacts of climate warming on flow regime in the cold regions dominated by monsoonal rain during the warm season have received little attention in the literature. In this study, the responses of magnitude and timing of high flows to climate warming were analyzed by using a paired-year approach based on the hydrometeorological data of two large rain-dominated watersheds in the cold region of north-eastern China in the past approximately four decades (1975–2013). The results indicated that high flow timings of two watersheds both exhibited significant negative trends associated with the significant increasing trends in air temperature and spring rain over the study period. The results from paired-year approach indicated average timings of high flows in the warming years were significantly advanced by 21 and 25 days in Upper Huma River (UHR) and Ganhe River (GR) watersheds, respectively, which was at least partly attributed to the more frequent occurrence of spring snowmelt/rain generated high flows because of climate warming-induced earlier snowmelt and increased spring rain. The average magnitude of high flows decreased by 13.7% and 14.0% in the warming years compared with those in the reference years in the UHR and GR watersheds, respectively. These findings have implications for water resource management in the study region and similar rain-dominated cold regions across the globe.

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Quantifying Impacts of Forest Recovery on Water Yield in Two Large Watersheds in the Cold Region of Northeast China

Cited by 13 publications

References 75 publications

Water Yield Responses to Gradual Changes in Forest Structure and Species Composition in a Subboreal Watershed in Northeastern China

Water Yield Responses to Gradual Changes in Forest Structure and Species Composition in a Subboreal Watershed in Northeastern China

Restoration at the landscape scale as a means of mitigation and adaptation to climate change

Changes in Magnitude and Timing of High Flows in Large Rain-Dominated Watersheds in the Cold Region of North-Eastern China

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