A regional climate simulation study with land cover dynamics in Northern China

A social-economic database based on the Governmental Statistical Annals, county-to-county investigation, literature verification, as well as the satellite identification was completed recently by the Remote Sensing and GIS Research Center, Beijing Normal University of China. The GIS Operational System handing this database not only provides details of the social, ecological, and economic information of the Northern China's 13 provinces since earlier 1950s, but also gives out predictions of these information by 2050 with different sceneries concerning the population increase, land use variation, governmental policy adjusting, administrating capability, science and technology development, National GDP increment, as well as world climate change. Aims at further regional climate simulation study, there is a special module nested in the GIS Operational System that interprets the county-level administrative data-units to a 60 × 60 km numerical mesh-grid suitable for climate model. By incorporating the land use dynamics provided by the above database, the new generation of the Regional Integrate Environment Modeling System (RIEMS2.0) was used for climate simulation study. The preliminary simulation studies show that: (1) the regional climate will be affected by the LULC variation because the equilibrium of water and heat transfer in the air-vegetation interface is changed; (2) the integrate impact of the LULC variation on climate (such as temperature, humidity and net long-wave radiation, precipitation) is not only limited to the Northern China where LULC varies, but also to the whole numerical domain where the LULC does not vary at all; (3) the ecological construction engineering implemented in Northern China including the Green-Great Wall construction engineering, the replace farming with forestry and grass movement, and the natural forest conservation etc has shown and will work positively on the eco-environment improvement, particularly shown as the increased precipitation in Northern China.