Response of Surface Temperature to Afforestation in the Kubuqi Desert, Inner Mongolia

Abstract

In this study, micrometeorological observations in a shrub ecosystem and an adjacent poplar plantation forest ecosystem in the Kubuqi Desert, Inner Mongolia, China, are used to evaluate the theory of intrinsic biophysical mechanism (IBPM) and to investigate the biophysical effects of afforestation. Results indicate that after forcing energy balance closure to the observed fluxes, the IBPM theory agrees very well with the observed temporal variations in the surface temperature and with the observed temperature difference between the paired sites at the half‐hourly time scale. Afforestation activity in this dryland landscape has a cooling effect (−0.5 ± 0.2 K) in the daytime in all the seasons and a warming effect (0.2 ± 0.1 K) in the nighttime during the winter, spring and, autumn but a cooling effect (−1.0 ± 0.3 K) in the summer at night. These temperature changes are decomposed into contributions from changes in surface albedo, surface roughness, Bowen ratio, and ground heat flux. Comparison is made between the IBPM theory and the theory of the decomposed temperature metric.

Impact of Large-Scale Afforestation on Surface Temperature: A Case Study in the Kubuqi Desert, Inner Mongolia Based on the WRF Model

“…This study extends the work we have recently published [36]. In that study, we deployed a space-for-time strategy to investigate the T s response to afforestation.…”

“…These datasets contain the daily climatological variables (the pressure, the temperature at 1.5 m, the wind at 10 m and the precipitation) for 2008 for nine meteorological stations across the Kubuqi Desert (Figure 3c, black dots). In addition, the surface flux variables (sensible heat, latent heat, ground heat) were evaluated against the data obtained in 2008 at an eddy-covariance site located in a shrubland ecosystem in the center of the Kubuqi Desert (40 Figure 3c, red dot; [36]).…”

“…In the present study, we use the WRF model to quantify the T s change at the regional scale. The flux observations described in Wang, et al [36] are used to verify the WRF model performance. An advantage of the WRF modeling over the pair-sites analysis is that we can quantify the effect of not only shrub-to-forest conversion but also other types of land-use change in the Kubuqi Desert.…”

Prospects for the sustainability of social-ecological systems (SES) on the Mongolian plateau: five critical issues

“…This tight water balance between ET and precipitation found at the Beijing polar plantation site is very similar to that of Kubuqi in IM (Hao et al 2016b). A long term water balance study on water use between a planted 6 year old plantation and a native shrub land in the Kubuqi Desert (annual precipitation~320 mm) , Lu et al 2011, Wang et al 2018 found that poplar plantations used more water than was received by incident natural precipitation. The growing season ET was similar between the two sites (~220 mm), but the growing season ET at the poplar site exceeded precipitation by~80 mm, while the ET of the shrub land was similar to the precipitation, indicating that irrigation is essential to meet the poplars' ET demand.…”

Attribution of Local Temperature Response to Deforestation

“…Both the IBM and TRM methods are based on the surface energy balance equation. As a result, energy balance closure is an important condition for the two models (Wang et al, ). Unfortunately, the measured fluxes do not always satisfy the surface energy balance condition and the ground heat flux or heat storage measurements are not always available.…”