An analytical reductionist framework to separate the effects of climate change and human activities on variation in water use efficiency

Abstract

Ecosystem water use efficiency (WUE) is a key indicator that depicts the carbon-water coupling relationship in terrestrial ecosystems. Separating the effects of climate change and human activities to the variation in WUE are essential for water resources and ecosystem management, especially for fragile ecosystems such as the Tibetan Plateau (TP). In this study, we introduced an analytical framework that combined the attribution approach with the elastic coefficient separation method to assess the impact of climate change and human activities on WUE variation in the TP from 1982 to 2015. The results are the following: (1) the multiyear mean annual WUE over the TP was 0.65 g C·kg−1 H2O and had a slightly increasing trend with a slope of 0.004 g C·kg−1 H2O yr−1 with about 87% of the vegetated area showed increasing trend. (2) WUE was positively correlated with temperature, precipitation and air pressure. The northwest TP tends to be a water-limited condition, while the thermal stress is spatially universal in the TP, climate warming and wetting promoted the gross primary productivity (GPP) and WUE enhancement in the TP. (3) WUE was more sensitive to GPP, and variation in WUE was mainly contributed by GPP. Climate change and human activities tend to cause more variations in GPP rather than evapotranspiration (ET), but great differences exist for different regions and vegetation types. (4) There was a good consistency between the WUE variation calculated by the framework and the actual WUE variation (R2 = 0.95). Climate change dominated the increase of WUE in the TP with a contribution rate of 79.8%, while human activities tend to reduce WUE (−20.2%). Ecological projects played a positive role in the ecological restoration of the TP, but there may be other human activities, which caused ecological degradation, that may need more attention in future ecological protections.