Effects Of Deforestation And Afforestation In The Central Part Of The East European Plain On Regional Weather Conditions

Abstract

Forest vegetation can affect the climate and weather patterns in multiple ways. What are the main mechanisms of such influence and how the land-use and vegetation changes may affect the weather and climate conditions in different geographical regions are still not quite clear. In our study, the possible impact of land use and forest cover changes in the central part of the East European plain on regional meteorological conditions was investigated using the regional COSMO model. In our modeling experiments we used two extreme land-use change scenarios imitating total deforestation and afforestation of experimental area located between 55° and 59ºN and 28° and 37°E in the central part of the East European plain. Modeling results conducted for the year 2016 showed that deforestation results in increase of the temperature difference between summer and winter months by up to 0.6ºС and in reduction of the annual precipitation by 35 mm. On the contrary, afforestation leads to decrease of the annual temperature range by 0.3° С and to growth of annual precipitation by 15 mm. Moreover, the deforestation results in higher frequencies of stronger winds and lower number of fog events, while the afforestation leads to opposite effects. Analysis of the Khromov and Gorchinsky indexes of continentality showed that the deforestation of the selected experimental area may lead to increase of the climate continentality in the study region, whereas the afforestation results in milder climate conditions.

Effect of land use change on hydrology of forested watersheds

“…LUCCs can be main driving factors for local or regional climate conditions by altering surface albedo, ET efficiency, soil moisture, surface roughness and minimum–maximum temperature. According to Nikitin et al (2019), deforestation resulted in an increase of the temperature difference between summer and winter months by up to 0.6°С and in a reduction of the annual precipitation by 35 mm. In addition, Bruijnzeel (2004) indicated that forest conversion over areas between 1000 and 10,000 km 2 caused changes on cloud formations.…”

Drivers Of Deforestation And Forest Degradation In Palawan, Philippines: An Analysis Using Social-Ecological Systems (SES) And Institutional Analysis And Development (IAD) Approaches

“…These include carbon sequestration (Richards and Stokes 2004), hydrologic cycle and nutrient cycling (Waring and Schlesinger 1985), watershed protection (Kramer et al 1997), habitat for animals and biodiversity (Reeves and Daniels 2020), and livelihood for humans (Chechina et al 2018) among others. However, just like any other ecosystems, forests are faced with a myriad of threats such as natural and anthropogenic forest fires (Johnson and Miyanishi 2001;Dugarjav et al 2010;López and Saavedra 2021), climate change (Nikitin et al 2019;Seidl et al 2017), pollution (Smith 2012), and deforestation and forest degradation which are considered to be the biggest threats to the forests worldwide (Gichuki 2019). The act or process of converting forest land to non-forest land is known as deforestation, while forest degradation is a decrease in forest production capacity as measured by forest quality, carbon stock, and vegetation type (Van Khuc et al 2018).…”

The impact of land use and land cover change on hydrological processes in Brantas watershed, East Java, Indonesia

“…Ermoshin et al (2013) studied long-term land use change in the transboundary Amur river basin. Nikitin et al (2019) have evaluated the possible impact of LULCC in the central part of the East European plain on regional meteorological conditions using the regional COSMO model. CC and LULCC are the main drivers of streamflow change and play predominant roles both upstream and downstream (Liu et al, 2020).…”