Extended Dependence of the Hydrological Regime on the Land Cover Change in the Three-North Region of China: An Evaluation under Future Climate Conditions

The hydrological regime in arid and semi-arid regions is quite sensitive to climate and land cover changes (LCC). The Three-North region (TNR) in China experiences diverse climate conditions, from arid to humid zones. In this region, substantial LCC has occurred over the past decades due to ecological restoration programs and urban expansion. At a regional scale, the hydrological effects of LCC have been demonstrated to be less observable than the effects of climate change, but it is unclear whether or not the effects of LCC may be intensified by future climate conditions. In this study, we employed remote sensing datasets and a macro-scale hydrological modeling to identify the dependence of the future hydrological regime of the TNR on past LCC. The hydrological effects over the period from 2020–2099 were evaluated based on a Representative Concentration Pathway climate scenario. The results indicated that the forest area increased in the northwest (11,691 km2) and the north (69 km2) of China but declined in the northeast (30,042 km2) over the past three decades. Moreover, the urban area has expanded by 1.3% in the TNR. Under the future climate condition, the hydrological regime will be influenced significantly by LCC. Those changes from 1986 to 2015 may alter the future hydrological cycle mainly by promoting runoff (3.24 mm/year) and decreasing evapotranspiration (3.23 mm/year) over the whole region. The spatial distribution of the effects may be extremely uneven: the effects in humid areas would be stronger than those in other areas. Besides, with rising temperatures and precipitation from 2020 to 2099, the LCC may heighten the risk of dryland expansion and flooding more than climate change alone. Despite uncertainties in the datasets and methods, the regional-scale hydrological model provides new insights into the extended impacts of ecological restoration and urbanization on the hydrological regime of the TNR.

[1]  Son V. Nghiem,et al.  Interdecadal changes in snow depth on Arctic sea ice , 2014 .

[2]  Thomas C. Pagano,et al.  Assessing water resources in China using PRECIS projections and a VIC model , 2011 .

[3]  Philip W. Gassman,et al.  Impact of land use and land cover change on the water balance of a large agricultural watershed: Historical effects and future directions , 2008 .

[4]  R. Pielke.  Land Use and Climate Change , 2005, Science.

[5]  Vimal Mishra,et al.  Are climatic or land cover changes the dominant cause of runoff trends in the Upper Mississippi River Basin? , 2013 .

[6]  R. Reedy,et al.  Impact of land use and land cover change on groundwater recharge and quality in the southwestern US , 2005 .

[7]  Jianping Huang,et al.  Dryland climate change: Recent progress and challenges , 2017 .

[8]  S. Sherwood,et al.  A Drier Future? , 2014, Science.

[9]  Guangxin Zhang,et al.  Spatiotemporal variability of climate and streamflow in the Songhua River Basin, northeast China , 2014 .

[10]  Yang Hong,et al.  Projected changes in mean and interannual variability of surface water over continental China , 2015, Science China Earth Sciences.

[11]  F. Piontek,et al.  A trend-preserving bias correction – the ISI-MIP approach , 2013 .

[12]  Eric F. Wood,et al.  Predicting the Discharge of Global Rivers , 2001, Journal of Climate.

[13]  Zhibao Dong,et al.  Has the Three Norths Forest Shelterbelt Program solved the desertification and dust storm problems in arid and semiarid China , 2010 .

[14]  Marc Antrop,et al.  Transitions in European land-management regimes between 1800 and 2010 , 2015 .

[15]  Julienne Stroeve,et al.  Observed Arctic sea-ice loss directly follows anthropogenic CO2 emission , 2016, Science.

[16]  Shigeru Kondo.  Self-Organizing Somites , 2014, Science.

[17]  Xiao Zheng,et al.  A new climatic classification of afforestation in Three-North regions of China with multi-source remote sensing data , 2015, Theoretical and Applied Climatology.

[18]  S. Seneviratne,et al.  Global assessment of trends in wetting and drying over land , 2014 .

[19]  S. Kanae,et al.  Global Hydrological Cycles and World Water Resources , 2006, Science.

[20]  F. Piontek,et al.  The Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI–MIP): Project framework , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[21]  Li Wenhua,et al.  Degradation and restoration of forest ecosystems in China , 2004 .

[22]  D. Lettenmaier,et al.  Hydrologic Sensitivity of Global Rivers to Climate Change , 2001 .

[23]  Mohammed Sharif,et al.  Assessment of climate change impacts on streamflows in Satluj river basin, India using SWAT model , 2017 .

[24]  D. Lettenmaier,et al.  Surface soil moisture parameterization of the VIC-2L model: Evaluation and modification , 1996 .

[25]  Corinne Le Quéré,et al.  Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[26]  F. Ludwig,et al.  Global water resources affected by human interventions and climate change , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[27]  Curtis E. Woodcock,et al.  Time series analysis of satellite data reveals continuous deforestation of New England since the 1980s , 2016 .

[28]  Qiang Huang,et al.  Impact of climate change and human activities on runoff in the Weihe River Basin, China , 2015 .

[29]  Peter Molnar,et al.  Climate change, flooding in arid environments, and erosion rates , 2001 .

[30]  Jay Gao,et al.  Characteristics of desertification and its rehabilitation in China , 1997 .

[31]  Andrew E. Suyker,et al.  Land management and land-cover change have impacts of similar magnitude on surface temperature , 2014 .

[32]  Jiyuan Liu,et al.  Spatiotemporal patterns and characteristics of land-use change in China during 2010–2015 , 2018, Journal of Geographical Sciences.

[33]  Yang Hong,et al.  Quantitative assessment of climate change and human impacts on long‐term hydrologic response: a case study in a sub‐basin of the Yellow River, China , 2010 .

[34]  E. Lambin,et al.  Dynamics of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change in Tropical Regions , 2003 .

[35]  Hui Tao,et al.  Trends of streamflow in the Tarim River Basin during the past 50 years: Human impact or climate change? , 2011 .

[36]  Jianping Huang,et al.  Accelerated dryland expansion under climate change , 2016 .

[37]  Hanqin Tian,et al.  China's land cover and land use change from 1700 to 2005: Estimations from high‐resolution satellite data and historical archives , 2010 .

[38]  D. Lettenmaier,et al.  A simple hydrologically based model of land surface water and energy fluxes for general circulation models , 1994 .

[39]  Wenzhao Liu,et al.  Spatiotemporal characteristics of reference evapotranspiration during 1961-2009 and its projected changes during 2011-2099 on the Loess Plateau of China , 2012 .

[40]  Xianhong Xie,et al.  Detection and attribution of changes in hydrological cycle over the Three-North region of China: Climate change versus afforestation effect , 2015 .

[41]  Jiyuan Liu,et al.  Spatiotemporal characteristics, patterns, and causes of land-use changes in China since the late 1980s , 2014, Journal of Geographical Sciences.

[42]  Jindi Wang,et al.  Long-Time-Series Global Land Surface Satellite Leaf Area Index Product Derived From MODIS and AVHRR Surface Reflectance , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[43]  Z. Hao,et al.  The impacts of climate change and land cover/use transition on the hydrology in the upper Yellow River Basin, China , 2013 .