The climatic impacts of land use and land cover change compared among countries

Abstract

(1947-), Professor, specialized in remote sensing of natural resources and environment, land use and land cover change and ecological effects at macro-scale. E-mail: liujy@igsnrr.ac Abstract: Land use and land cover change (LULCC) strongly influence regional and global climate by combining both biochemical and biophysical processes. However, the biophysical process was often ignored, which may offset the biogeochemical effects, so measures to address climate change could not reach the target. Thus, the biophysical influence of LULCC is critical for understanding observed climate changes in the past and potential scenarios in the future. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the mechanisms and effects of large-scale LULCC on climate change through changing the underlying surface, and thus the energy balance. The key scientific issues on understanding the impacts of human activities on global climate that must be addressed including: (1) what are the basic scientific facts of spatial and temporal variations of LULCC in China and comparative countries? (2) How to understand the coupling driving mechanisms of human activities and climate change on the LULCC and then to forecasting the future scenarios? (3) What are the scientific mechanisms of LULCC impacts on biophysical processes of land surface, and then the climate? (4) How to estimate the contributions of LULCC to climate change by affecting biophysical processes of land surface? By international comparison, the impacts of LULCC on climate change at the local, regional and global scales were revealed and evaluated. It can provide theoretical basis for the global change, and have great significance to mitigate and adapt to global climate changes.

Spatio-temporal differences in cloud cover of Landsat-8 OLI observations across China during 2013–2016

“…At present, Landsat imagery is important and successful for evaluating and discriminating the quality of soil and water (Liu et al, 2016). In China, the spatial distribution of grain production region is closely related to nine major river basins: the Songliao River (SLR), Inland River (InR), Luanhai River (LHR), Yellow River (YeR), Pearl River (PR), Yangtze River (YtR), Southwest Rivers (SWRs), Huaihe River (HR), and Southeast Rivers (SERs) basins (Jin et al, 2016;Liu et al, 2007).…”

“…China has experienced rapid land use/land cover changes (LUCC) in ecotones, fragile ecological regions (Liu et al, 2016;Ren and Wang, 2017), and metropolitan areas (Liu et al, 2014;Wu et al, 2016) in the past decades. Indeed, the vast territory, various climates and diverse topography in China, are conducive to a variety of LUCC.…”

“…Historical 30-m resolution data of Landsat-4/5 Thematic Mapper (TM, 1982(TM, -2013, Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+, 1999-), and Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI, 2013-) are important and extensive data sources of Earth observation since the late 1980s, covering geo-information, natural vegetation, agricultural crops, and land cover types (Hansen and Loveland, 2012;Jin et al, 2013a;Steven et al, 2003). However, the most obvious challenge for their application is CC and cloud shadows which are widely reported in Landsat-derived remote sensing analyses (Asner, 2001;Ju and Roy, 2008;Hansen and Loveland, 2012;Liu et al, 2016;Whitcraft et al, 2015), particularly in the subtropics and tropics (Asner, 2001;Li et al, 2016). Consequently, some studies have attempted to address the issue of CC, such as the use of cloud removal algorithms to exclude CC areas or replace them with other images (Ju and Roy, 2008;Zhu and Woodcock, 2012).…”

Understanding the Role of Optimized Land Use/Land Cover Components in Mitigating Summertime Intra-Surface Urban Heat Island Effect: A Study on Downtown Shanghai, China

“…Nowadays, urban areas, which are subject to local warming effect or the combined local and global warming effects, are the fundamental units for climate change adaptation and mitigation [33]. Thus, focusing on the relationship between LULC components and artificial modification of urban climate, how cities cope with the UHI effect optimizing land use patterns towards sustaining regional ecosystems, will significantly affect UHI mitigation and adaption to climate change [34][35][36][37][38][39][40].…”

Effect of farmland expansion on drought over the past century in Songnen Plain, Northeast China

“…Thus, in addition to meeting the needs for human survival, intensive LUCC has also aggravated droughts, which in turn has limited the ability to meet human needs. The feedback mechanism between LUCC and climate change is a key scientific problem (Liu, 2016). However, the effects of farmland expansion on drought remain poorly understood.…”