scholarly journals Disentangling the roles of land-use-related drivers on vegetation greenness across China

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
LinLing Tang ◽  
Xiaoling Chen ◽  
Xiaobin Cai ◽  
Jian Li
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Urban Area ◽  
Vegetation Dynamics ◽  
Bayesian Model Averaging ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Area Index ◽  
Vegetation Greenness ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Fertilization

Abstract Quantifying the drivers of terrestrial vegetation dynamics is critical for monitoring ecosystem carbon sequestration and bioenergy production. Large scale vegetation dynamics can be observed using the Leaf Area Index (LAI) derived from satellite data as a measure of “greenness”. Previous studies have quantified the effects of climate change and carbon dioxide fertilization on vegetation greenness. In contrast, the specific roles of land-use-related drivers (LURDs) on vegetation greenness have not been characterized. Here, we combined the Interior-Point Method-optimized ecosystem model and the Bayesian model averaging statistical method to disentangle the roles of LURDs on vegetation greenness in China from 2000 to 2014. Results showed a significant increase in growing season LAI (greening) over 35% of the land area of China, whereas less than 6% of it exhibited a significantly decreasing trend (browning). The overall impact of LURDs on vegetation greenness over the whole country was comparatively low. However, the local effects of LURDs on the greenness trends of some specified areas were considerable due to afforestation and urbanization. Southern Coastal China had the greatest area fractions (35.82% of its corresponding area) of the LURDs effects on greening, following by Southwest China. It was because of these economic regions with great afforestation programs. Afforestation effects could explain 27% of the observed greening trends in the forest area. In contrast, the browning impact caused by urbanization was approximately three times of the greening effects of both climate change and carbon dioxide fertilization on the urban area. And they made the urban area had a 50% decrease in LAI. The effects of residual LURDs only accounted for less than 8% of the corresponding observed greenness changes. Such divergent roles would be valuable for understanding changes in local ecosystem functions and services under global environmental changes.

Global Natural Hazard and Disaster Vulnerability Management

2018 ◽  
pp. 83-104
Author(s):  
Nkemdilim Maureen Ekpeni ◽  
Amidu Owolabi Ayeni
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Natural Hazard ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
Vulnerability Management ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Two Sides

This chapter examines both concept of global hazard and disaster and its management in the lights of its vulnerability. It categorized the different types of hazards and disasters and their components. From the research findings, it is observed that hazards and disaster are two sides of a coin. They occur at the interface between human systems and natural events in our physical environments. This chapter highlights that the major environmental changes driving hazards and vulnerability to disasters are climate change, land-use changes, and degradation of natural resources. After presenting a typology of disasters and their magnitude globally, management of disaster has transited from just being a “response and relief”-centric approach to a mitigation and preparedness approach.

Balancing the competing needs of climate change, biodiversity and rural communities

2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 ◽  
pp. 249-249
Author(s):  
H Prosser
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Nitrous Oxide ◽  
Anaerobic Digestion ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Emissions ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
New Technology ◽  
The Uk

The work of the UK Climate Change Commission (UKCCC) in recommending targets and options for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is focusing attention on what agriculture and land use can contribute to deliver these targets. Although overall the major issue is the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, agriculture and land use are significant emitters of methane and nitrous oxide. UKCCC has identified three main routes by which emissions can be reduced• Lifestyle change with less reliance on carbon intensive produce -eg switching from sheep, and beef to pig, poultry and vegetables.• Changing farm practices – eg to improve use of fertilisers and manures• Using new technology on farms – eg modifying rumen processes, anaerobic digestion.

scholarly journals Greening Implication Inferred from Vegetation Dynamics Interacted with Climate Change and Human Activities over the Southeast Qinghai–Tibet Plateau

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (20) ◽  
pp. 2421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li ◽  
Liu ◽  
Liu ◽  
Li ◽  
Xu
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Vegetation Dynamics ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Growing Season ◽  
Tibet Plateau ◽  
Ecological Environment ◽  
Upstream Region ◽  
High Mountain

Vegetation dynamics are sensitive to climate change and human activities, as vegetation interacts with the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. The Yarlung Zangbo River (YZR) basin, with the vulnerable ecological environment, has experienced a series of natural disasters since the new millennium. Therefore, in this study, the vegetation dynamic variations and their associated responses to environmental changes in the YZR basin were investigated based on Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) data from 2000 to 2016. Results showed that (1) the YZR basin showed an obvious vegetation greening process with a significant increase of the growing season NDVI (Zc = 2.31, p < 0.05), which was mainly attributed to the wide greening tendency of the downstream region that accounted for over 50% area of the YZR basin. (2) Regions with significant greening accounted for 25.4% of the basin and were mainly concentrated in the Nyang River and Parlung Tsangpo River sub-basins. On the contrary, the browning regions accounted for <25% of the basin and were mostly distributed in the urbanized cities of the midstream, implying a significant influence of human activities on vegetation greening. (3) The elevation dependency of the vegetation in the YZR basin was significant, showing that the vegetation of the low-altitude regions was better than that of the high-altitude regions. The greening rate exhibited a significantly more complicated relationship with the elevation, which increased with elevated altitude (above 3500 m) and decreased with elevated altitude (below 3500 m). (4) Significantly positive correlations between the growing season NDVI and surface air temperature were detected, which were mainly distributed in the snow-dominated sub-basins, indicating that glaciers and snow melting processes induced by global warming play an important role in vegetation growth. Although basin-wide non-significant negative correlations were found between precipitation and growing season NDVI, positive influences of precipitation on vegetation greening occurred in the arid and semi-arid upstream region. These findings could provide important information for ecological environment protection in the YZR basin and other high mountain regions.

Interactive effect of vegetation and climate warming on total microbial and fungal biomass in soil

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Udovenko ◽  
Vusal Guliyev ◽  
Evgenia Blagodatskaya
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Microbial Biomass ◽  
Fungal Biomass ◽  
Soil Microbial Biomass ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Interactive Effect ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Research Station ◽  
Soil Microbial

&lt;p&gt;Soil microbiota ensuring sustainable functioning of terrestrial ecosystems is strongly dependent on climatic conditions and vegetation type. Even within the same climatic zone, active land use alters the size, structure and functioning of the microbial community. We hypothesized that land use effect on soil microbial biomass will be more pronounced under impact of global warming. We also tested whether the biomass of specific microbial group (e.g., fungi) is more sensitive to environmental changes than total microbial biomass.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We proved these hypotheses in the experiments based on Global Change Experimental Facility platform, located at the field research station of the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research in Bad Lauchst&amp;#228;dt near Halle, Saxon-Anhalt, Germany. Experimental setup included 50 plots, located in 10 blocks (5 plots per block). Five blocks are under ambient climate and the rest 5 blocks are subjected to a realistic climate change treatment (under conditions predicted by several models of climate change in Central Germany for 2050&amp;#8211;2080 period). Five land use types were established in every block: conventional farming; organic farming; intensively used meadow, extensively used meadow and extensively used pasture. We determined soil microbial biomass and its fungal component by chloroform fumigation-extraction method and by ergosterol content, respectively. We found that fungal biomass was more sensitive to intensive land use for crop production than to climate change. The possible mechanisms of such a sensitivity will be discussed.&lt;/p&gt;

scholarly journals Critical review of the application of SWAT in the upper Nile Basin countries

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 3761-3788 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. van Griensven ◽  
P. Ndomba ◽  
S. Yalew ◽  
F. Kilonzo
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Crop Yields ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Nile Basin ◽  
Area Index ◽  
Tropical Highlands ◽  
Model Set ◽  
Set Up

Abstract. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a hydrological simulation tool that is widely applied within the Nile basin. Up to date, more than 20 peer reviewed papers describe the use of SWAT for a variety of problems in the upper Nile basin countries, such as erosion modeling, land use modeling, climate change impact modeling and water resources management. The majority of the studies are clustered in the tropical highlands in Ethiopia and around Lake Victoria. The popularity of SWAT is attributed to the fact that the tool is freely available and that it is readily applicable through the development of Geographic Information System (GIS) based interfaces and its easy linkage to sensitivity, calibration and uncertainty analysis tools. The online and free availability of basic GIS data that are required for SWAT made its applicability more straight forward even in data scarce areas. However, the easy use of SWAT may not always lead to knowledgeable models. In this paper, we aim at critically reviewing the use of SWAT in the context of the modeling purpose and problem descriptions in the tropical highlands of the Nile Basin countries. A number of criteria are used to evaluate the model set-up, model performances, physical representation of the model parameters, and the correctness of the hydrological model balance. On the basis of performance indicators, the majority of the SWAT models were classified as giving satisfactory to very good results. Nevertheless, the hydrological mass balances as reported in several papers contained losses that might not be justified. Several papers also reported unrealistic parameter values. More worrying is that many papers lack this information. For this reason, it is difficult to give an overall positive evaluation to most of the reported SWAT models. An important gap is the lack of attention that is given to the vegetation and crop processes. None of the papers reported any adaptation to the crop parameters, or any crop related output such as leaf area index, biomass or crop yields. A proper simulation of the land cover is important for obtaining correct runoff generation, evapotranspiration and erosion computations. It is also found that a comparison of SWAT applications on the same or similar case study but by different research teams and/or model versions resulted in very different results. It is therefore recommended to try to find better methods to evaluate the representativeness of the distributed processes and parameters, especially when land use studies are envisaged or predictions of the future through environmental changes. The main recommendation is that more details on the model set-up, the parameters and outputs should be provided in the journal papers or supplementary materials in order to allow for a more stringent evaluation of these models.

scholarly journals Improved SWAT vegetation growth module for tropical ecosystem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadesse Alemayehu ◽  
Ann van Griensven ◽  
Willy Bauwens
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Swat Model ◽  
Evergreen Forest ◽  
Tropical Ecosystem ◽  
Area Index ◽  
Vegetation Growth

Abstract. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a globally applied river basin eco-hydrological simulator in a wide spectrum of studies, ranging from land use change and climate change impacts studies to research for the development of best water management practices. However, SWAT has limitations in simulating the seasonal growth cycles for trees and perennial vegetation in tropics, where the major plant growth controlling factor is the rainfall (via soil moisture) rather than temperature. Our goal is to improve the vegetation growth module of the SWAT model for simulating the vegetation parameters such as the leaf area index (LAI) for tropics. Therefore, we present a modified SWAT version for the tropics (SWAT-T) that uses of a simple but robust soil moisture index (SMI) – a quotient of the rainfall (P) and reference evapotranspiration (PET) – to initiate a new growing season after a defined dry season. Our results for the Mara Basin (Kenya/Tanzania) show that the SWAT-T simulated LAI corresponds well with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LAI for evergreen forest, savanna grassland and shrubs, indicating that the SMI is a reliable proxy to dynamically initiate a new growing cycle. The water balance components (evapotranspiration and flow) simulated by the SWAT-T exhibit a good agreement with remote sensing-based evapotranspiration (RS-ET) and observed flow. The SWAT-T simulator with the proposed improved vegetation growth module for tropical ecosystem could be a robust tool for several applications including land use and climate change impact studies.

scholarly journals Environmental Scenario Analysis on Natural and Social-Ecological Systems: A Review of Methods, Approaches and Applications

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noelia Guaita García ◽  
Julia Martínez Fernández ◽  
Carl Fitz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Scenario Analysis ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Distributed Models ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Use Of Models

Scenario analysis is a useful tool to facilitate discussions about the main trends of future change and to promote the understanding of global environmental changes implications on relevant aspects of sustainability. In this paper, we reviewed 294 articles published between 1995–2019, to evaluate the state of the art use of models and scenarios to investigate the effects of land use change and climate change on natural and social-ecological systems. Our review focuses on three issues. The first explores the extent to which the environmental dynamics of land use and climate change were jointly analyzed and the spatial scales associated with such integrated studies. The second explores the modelling methodologies and approaches used in the scenario analysis. The third explores the methods for developing or building scenarios. Results show that in most predictions there is little integration of key drivers of change. We find most forecasting studies use a sectoral modelling approach through dynamic spatially distributed models. Most articles do not apply a participatory approach in the development of scenarios. Based on this review, we conclude that there are some gaps in how scenario analysis on natural and social-ecological systems are conducted. These gaps pose a challenge for the use of models and scenarios as predictive tools in decision-making processes in the context of global change.

scholarly journals Critical review of SWAT applications in the upper Nile basin countries

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. 3371-3381 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. van Griensven ◽  
P. Ndomba ◽  
S. Yalew ◽  
F. Kilonzo
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Crop Yields ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Nile Basin ◽  
Area Index ◽  
Tropical Highlands ◽  
Model Set ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Journal Papers

Abstract. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is an integrated river basin model that is widely applied within the Nile basin. Up to date, more than 20 peer-reviewed papers describe the use of SWAT for a variety of problems in the upper Nile basin countries, such as erosion modelling, land use and climate change impact modelling and water resources management. The majority of the studies are focused on locations in the tropical highlands in Ethiopia and around Lake Victoria. The popularity of SWAT is attributed to the fact that the tool is freely available and that it is readily applicable through the development of geographic information system (GIS) based interfaces and its easy linkage to sensitivity, calibration and uncertainty analysis tools. The online and free availability of basic GIS data that are required for SWAT made its applicability more straightforward even in data-scarce areas. However, the easy use of SWAT may not always lead to appropriate models which is also a consequence of the quality of the available free databases in these regions. In this paper, we aim at critically reviewing the use of SWAT in the context of the modelling purpose and problem descriptions in the tropical highlands of the Nile basin countries. To evaluate the models that are described in journal papers, a number of criteria are used to evaluate the model set-up, model performances, physical representation of the model parameters, and the correctness of the hydrological model balance. On the basis of performance indicators, the majority of the SWAT models were classified as giving satisfactory to very good results. Nevertheless, the hydrological mass balances as reported in several papers contained losses that might not be justified. Several papers also reported the use of unrealistic parameter values. More worrying is that many papers lack this information. For this reason, most of the reported SWAT models have to be evaluated critically. An important gap is the lack of attention that is given to the vegetation and crop processes. None of the papers reported any adaptation to the crop parameters, or any crop-related output such as leaf area index, biomass or crop yields. A proper simulation of the land cover is important for obtaining correct runoff generation, evapotranspiration and erosion computations. It is also found that a comparison of SWAT applications on the same or similar case study but by different research teams and/or model versions resulted in very different results. It is therefore recommended to find better methods to evaluate the representativeness of the distributed processes and parameters (especially when land use studies are envisaged) or predictions of the future through environmental changes. The main recommendation is that more details on the model set-up, the parameters and outputs should be provided in the journal papers or supplementary materials in order to allow for a more stringent evaluation of these models.

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