scholarly journals Modelling the integrated effects of land use and climate change scenarios on forest ecosystem aboveground biomass, a case study in Taihe County of China

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuo Wu ◽  
Erfu Dai ◽  
Quansheng Ge ◽  
Weimin Xi ◽  
Xiaofan Wang
Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 771
Author(s):  
Pak Shing Yeung ◽  
Jimmy Chi-Hung Fung ◽  
Chao Ren ◽  
Yong Xu ◽  
Kangning Huang ◽  
...  

Urbanization is one of the most significant contributing factors to anthropogenic climate change. However, a lack of projected city land use data has posed significant challenges to factoring urbanization into climate change modeling. Thus, the results from current models may contain considerable errors in estimating future climate scenarios. The Pearl River Delta region was selected as a case study to provide insight into how large-scale urbanization and different climate change scenarios impact the local climate. This study adopts projected land use data from freely available satellite imagery and applies dynamic simulation land use results to the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). The simulation periods cover the summer periods in 2010 and 2029–2031, the latter of which is averaged to represent the year 2030. The WRF simulation used the observed local climate conditions in 2010 to represent the current scenario and the projected local climate changes for 2030 as the future scenario. Under all three future climate change scenarios, the warming trend is prominent (around 1–2 °C increase), with a widespread reduction in wind speed in inland areas (1–2 ms−1). The vulnerability of human health to thermal stress was evaluated by adopting the wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT). The results from the future scenarios suggest a high public health risk due to rising temperatures in the future. This study provides a methodology for a more comprehensive understanding of future urbanization and its impact on regional climate by using freely available satellite images and WRF simulation tools. The simulated temperature and WBGT results can serve local governments and stakeholders in city planning and the creation of action plans that will reduce the potential vulnerability of human health to excessive heat.


2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongyut Trisurat ◽  
Budsabong Kanchanasaka ◽  
Holger Kreft

Context Tropical ecosystems are widely recognised for their high species richness and outstanding concentrations of rare and endemic species. Previous studies either focussed on the effects of deforestation or climate change, whereas studies on the combined effects of these two major threats are limited. Aims This research aimed to model current and future distributions of medium- to large-sized mammal species on the basis of different land-use and climate-change scenarios in 2050 and to assess whether the predicted effects of land-use change are greater than those of climate change and whether the combined effects of these drivers are greater than those of either individual driver. Methods The present article demonstrates a method for combining nationwide wildlife-inventory data, spatially explicit species-distribution models, current and predicted future bioclimatic variables, other biophysical factors and human disturbance to map distributions of mammal species on the basis of different land-use and climate-change scenarios and to assess the role of protected areas in conservation planning. Key results Seventeen medium- to large-sized mammal species were selected for modelling. Most selected species were predicted to lose suitable habitat if the remaining forest cover declines from the current level of 57% to 50% in 2050. The predicted effects of deforestation were stronger than the effects of climate change. When climate and land-use change were combined, the predicted impacts were more severe. Most species would lose suitable habitat and the average shift in species distribution was greater than 40%. Conclusions The predicted effects were positive for only a few species and negative for most species. Current and future centres of mammal-species richness were predicted in large and contiguous protected forests and the average contribution of existing and proposed protected areas in protecting the focal species will increase from 73% to 80% across all scenarios. Implications The present research advances the current understanding of the ecology of 17 medium- to large-sized mammal species with conservation relevance and the factors that affect their distributions at the landscape scale. In addition, the research demonstrated that spatially explicit models and protected areas are effective means to contribute to protection of mammal species in current and future land-use and climate-change scenarios.


Author(s):  
Magdalena Banach-Szott ◽  
Bozena Debska ◽  
Erika Tobiasova

AbstractMany studies report organic carbon stabilization by clay minerals, but the effects of land use and soil type on the properties of humic acids (HAs) are missing. The aim of the paper is to determine the effects of land use and soil types on the characteristics of HAs, which have a considerable influence on organic matter quality. It was hypothesised that the effect of the land use on HAs properties depends on the particular size distribution. The research was performed in three ecosystems: agricultural, forest, and meadow, located in Slovakia. From each of them, the samples of 4 soil types were taken: Chernozem, Luvisol, Planosol, and Cambisol. The soil samples were assayed for the content of total organic carbon (TOC) and the particle size distribution. HAs were extracted with the Schnitzer method and analysed for the elemental composition, spectrometric parameters in the UV-VIS range, and hydrophilic and hydrophobic properties, and the infrared spectra were produced. The research results have shown that the properties of HAs can be modified by the land use and the scope and that the direction of changes depends on the soil type. The HAs of Chernozem and Luvisol in the agri-ecosystem were identified with a higher “degree of maturity”, as reflected by atomic ratios (H/C, O/C, O/H), absorbance coefficients, and the FT-IR spectra, as compared with the HAs of the meadow and forest ecosystem. However, as for the HAs of Cambisol, a higher “degree of maturity” was demonstrated for the meadow ecosystem, as compared with the HAs of the agri- and forest ecosystem. The present research has clearly identified that the content of clay is the factor determining the HAs properties. Soils with a higher content of the clay fraction contain HAs with a higher “degree of maturity”.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio-Juan Collados-Lara ◽  
David Pulido-Velazquez ◽  
Rosa María Mateos ◽  
Pablo Ezquerro

In this work, we developed a new method to assess the impact of climate change (CC) scenarios on land subsidence related to groundwater level depletion in detrital aquifers. The main goal of this work was to propose a parsimonious approach that could be applied for any case study. We also evaluated the methodology in a case study, the Vega de Granada aquifer (southern Spain). Historical subsidence rates were estimated using remote sensing techniques (differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar, DInSAR). Local CC scenarios were generated by applying a bias correction approach. An equifeasible ensemble of the generated projections from different climatic models was also proposed. A simple water balance approach was applied to assess CC impacts on lumped global drawdowns due to future potential rainfall recharge and pumping. CC impacts were propagated to drawdowns within piezometers by applying the global delta change observed with the lumped assessment. Regression models were employed to estimate the impacts of these drawdowns in terms of land subsidence, as well as to analyze the influence of the fine-grained material in the aquifer. The results showed that a more linear behavior was observed for the cases with lower percentage of fine-grained material. The mean increase of the maximum subsidence rates in the considered wells for the future horizon (2016–2045) and the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenario 8.5 was 54%. The main advantage of the proposed method is its applicability in cases with limited information. It is also appropriate for the study of wide areas to identify potential hot spots where more exhaustive analyses should be performed. The method will allow sustainable adaptation strategies in vulnerable areas during drought-critical periods to be assessed.


2012 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Wang ◽  
Yong He ◽  
Budong Qian ◽  
Brian McConkey ◽  
Herb Cutforth ◽  
...  

Wang, H., He, Y., Qian, B., McConkey, B., Cutforth, H., McCaig, T., McLeod, G., Zentner, R., DePauw, R., Lemke, R., Brandt, K., Liu, T., Qin, X., White, J., Hunt, T. and Hoogenboom, G. 2012. Short Communication: Climate change and biofuel wheat: A case study of southern Saskatchewan. Can. J. Plant Sci. 92: 421–425. This study assessed potential impacts of climate change on wheat production as a biofuel crop in southern Saskatchewan, Canada. The Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer-Cropping System Model (DSSAT-CSM) was used to simulate biomass and grain yield under three climate change scenarios (CGCM3 with the forcing scenarios of IPCC SRES A1B, A2 and B1) in the 2050s. Synthetic 300-yr weather data were generated by the AAFC stochastic weather generator for the baseline period (1961–1990) and each scenario. Compared with the baseline, precipitation is projected to increase in every month under all three scenarios except in July and August and in June for A2, when it is projected to decrease. Annual mean air temperature is projected to increase by 3.2, 3.6 and 2.7°C for A1B, A2 and B1, respectively. The model predicted increases in biomass by 28, 12 and 16% without the direct effect of CO2 and 74, 55 and 41% with combined effects (climate and CO2) for A1B, A2 and B1, respectively. Similar increases were found for grain yield. However, the occurrence of heat shock (>32°C) will increase during grain filling under the projected climate conditions and could cause severe yield reduction, which was not simulated by DSSAT-CSM. This implies that the future yield under climate scenarios might have been overestimated by DSSAT-CSM; therefore, model modification is required. Several measures, such as early seeding, must be taken to avoid heat damages and take the advantage of projected increases in temperature and precipitation in the early season.


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