The impact of global land-cover change on the terrestrial water cycle

Sterling, Shannon; Ducharne, Agnès; Polcher, Jan

doi:10.1038/nclimate1690

Cited by 590 publications

(393 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…We exclude the impacts of anthropogenic water use, mainly irrigation, on global water vapor concentrations and the associated RF (Boucher et al, 2004). Changes in water use and land use have numerous other implications for the hydrological cycle, including impacts on evapotranspiration, runoff, and wetland extent (Sterling et al, 2013). Related to these effects, the impact of land surface albedo changes may be further moderated by changes in cloudiness (Lawrence and Chase, 2010), which we did not consider in this analysis.…”

Section: Lulcc Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential climate forcing of land use and land cover change

2014

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Abstract. Pressure on land resources is expected to increase as global population continues to climb and the world becomes more affluent, swelling the demand for food. Changing climate may exert additional pressures on natural lands as present-day productive regions may shift, or soil quality may degrade, and the recent rise in demand for biofuels increases competition with edible crops for arable land. Given these projected trends there is a need to understand the global climate impacts of land use and land cover change (LULCC). Here we quantify the climate impacts of global LULCC in terms of modifications to the balance between incoming and outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere (radiative forcing, RF) that are caused by changes in long-lived and short-lived greenhouse gas concentrations, aerosol effects, and land surface albedo. We attribute historical changes in terrestrial carbon storage, global fire emissions, secondary organic aerosol emissions, and surface albedo to LULCC using simulations with the Community Land Model version 3.5. These LULCC emissions are combined with estimates of agricultural emissions of important trace gases and mineral dust in two sets of Community Atmosphere Model simulations to calculate the RF of changes in atmospheric chemistry and aerosol concentrations attributed to LULCC. With all forcing agents considered together, we show that 40 % (±16 %) of the present-day anthropogenic RF can be attributed to LULCC. Changes in the emission of non-CO 2 greenhouse gases and aerosols from LULCC enhance the total LULCC RF by a factor of 2 to 3 with respect to the LULCC RF from CO 2 alone. This enhancement factor also applies to projected LULCC RF, which we compute for four future scenarios associated with the Representative Concentration Pathways. We attribute total RFs between 0.9 and 1.9 W m −2 to LULCC for the year 2100 (relative to a preindustrial state). To place an upper bound on the potential of LULCC to alter the global radiation budget, we include a fifth scenario in which all arable land is cultivated by 2100. This theoretical extreme case leads to a LULCC RF of 3.9 W m −2 (±0.9 W m −2 ), suggesting that not only energy policy but also land policy is necessary to minimize future increases in RF and associated climate changes.

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Section: Lulcc Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential climate forcing of land use and land cover change

2014

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“…They have been increasingly altered by human actions including emissions of greenhouse gases, land use, water abstractions and the construction of dams and dykes (e.g., Vörösmarty and Sahagian 2000;Sterling et al 2013). Ecosystems suffer from these alterations and, in many regions, human development is constrained by water scarcity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling Freshwater Resources at the Global Scale: Challenges and Prospects

et al. 2015

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Quantification of spatially and temporally resolved water flows and water storage variations for all land areas of the globe is required to assess water resources, water scarcity and flood hazards, and to understand the Earth system. This quantification is done with the help of global hydrological models (GHMs). What are the challenges and prospects in the development and application of GHMs? Seven important challenges are presented. (1) Data scarcity makes quantification of human water use difficult even though significant progress has been achieved in the last decade. (2) series of water availability and use are needed to provide good indicators of water scarcity.(6) Integration of gradient-based groundwater modelling into GHMs is necessary for a better simulation of groundwater-surface water interactions and capillary rise. (7) Detection and attribution of human interference with freshwater systems by using GHMs are constrained by data of insufficient quality but also GHM uncertainty itself. Regarding prospects for progress, we propose to decrease the uncertainty of GHM output by making better use of in situ and remotely sensed observations of output variables such as river discharge or total water storage variations by multi-criteria validation, calibration or data assimilation. Finally, we present an initiative that works towards the vision of hyperresolution global hydrological modelling where GHM outputs would be provided at a 1-km resolution with reasonable accuracy.

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“…Land-use and land-cover changes directly reflect the impact of human activities on the terrestrial environment at regional to global scales (Zhang et al, 2012. For example, land-use and land-cover changes affect biogeophysical and biogeochemical processes, the surface radiation energy balance, carbon budget and even surface water circulation (Sterling et al, 2013;Boysen et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2014;Yan et al, 2015). An increase in the impervious surface area will affect local and regional climates, aggravate the effect of urban heat islands and bring pollution to water environments (Arnold and Gibbons, 1996;Grimmond, 2007;Grimm et al, 2008;Bierwagen et al, 2010;Zhao et al, 2014;Kuang et al, 2015aKuang et al, , 2015bYan et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remote sensing-based artificial surface cover classification in Asia and spatial pattern analysis

Kuang

Chen

Liu

et al. 2016

Sci. China Earth Sci.

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Artificial surfaces, characterized with intensive land-use changes and complex landscape structures, are important indicators of human impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. Without high-resolution land-cover data at continental scale, it is hard to evaluate the impacts of urbanization on regional climate, ecosystem processes and global environment. This study constructed a hierarchical classification system for artificial surfaces, promoted a remote sensing method to retrieve subpixel components of artificial surfaces from 30-m resolution satellite imageries (GlobeLand30) and developed a series of data products of high-precision urban built-up areas including impervious surface and vegetation cover in Asia in 2010. Our assessment, based on multisource data and expert knowledge, showed that the overall accuracy of classification was 90.79%. The mean relative error for the impervious surface components of cities was 0.87. The local error of the extracted information was closely related to the heterogeneity of urban buildings and vegetation in different climate zones. According to our results, the urban built-up area was 18.18×10 4 km 2 , accounting for 0.59% of the total land surface areas in Asia; urban impervious surfaces were 11.65×10 4 km 2 , accounting for 64.09% of the total urban built-up area in Asia. Vegetation and bare soils accounted for 34.56% of the urban built-up areas. There were three gradients: a concentrated distribution, a scattered distribution and an indeterminate distribution from east to west in terms of spatial pattern of urban impervious surfaces. China, India and Japan ranked as the top three countries with the largest impervious surface areas, which respectively accounted for 32.77%, 16.10% and 11.93% of the urban impervious surface area of Asia. We found the proportions of impervious surface and vegetation cover within urban built-up areas were closely related to the economic development degree of the country and regional climate environment. Built-up areas in developed countries had relatively low impervious surface and high public green vegetation cover, with 50-60% urban impervious surfaces in Japan, South Korea and Singapore. In comparison, the proportion of urban impervious surfaces in developing countries is approaching or exceeding 80% in Asia. In general, the composition and spatial patterns of built-up areas reflected population aggregation and economic development level as well as their impacts on the health of the environment in the sub-watershed.

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The impact of global land-cover change on the terrestrial water cycle

Cited by 590 publications

References 37 publications

Potential climate forcing of land use and land cover change

Potential climate forcing of land use and land cover change

Modelling Freshwater Resources at the Global Scale: Challenges and Prospects

Remote sensing-based artificial surface cover classification in Asia and spatial pattern analysis

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