Abstract
Land use and climate change exert pressure on ecosystems and threaten the sustainable supply of ecosystem services (ESS). In Southeast-Asia, the shift from swidden farming to permanent cash crop systems has led to a wide range of impacts on ESS. Our study area, the Nabanhe Reserve in Yunnan province (PR China), saw the loss of extensive forest areas and the expansion of rubber (Hevea brasiliensis Müll. Arg.) plantations. In this study, we model water yield and sediment export for a rubber-dominated watershed under multiple scenarios of land use and climate change in order to assess how both drivers influence the supply of these ESS. For this we use three stakeholder-validated land use scenarios, varying in their degree of rubber expansion and land management rules. As projected climate change varies remarkably between different climate models, we combined the land use scenarios with datasets of temperature and precipitation changes, derived from nine General Circulation Models (GCMs) of the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in order to model water yield and sediment export with InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs). Simulation results show that the effect of land use and land management decisions on water yield in Nabanhe Reserve are relatively minor (4% difference in water yield between land use scenarios), when compared to the effects that future climate change will exert on water yield (up to 15% increase or 13% decrease in water yield compared to the baseline climate). Changes in sediment export were more sensitive to land use change (15% increase or 64% decrease) in comparison to the effects of climate change (up to 10% increase). We conclude that in the future, particularly dry years may have a more pronounced effect on the water balance as the higher potential evapotranspiration increases the probability for periods of water scarcity, especially in the dry season. The method we applied can easily be transferred to regions facing comparable land use situations, as InVEST and the IPCC data are freely available.
Highlights
Ecosystem services (ESS) are defined as the goods and benefits humans gain from healthy and functional ecosystems [1]
If one considers the climate change scenarios alone (using the initial land use data (INIT)), If one considers the climate change scenarios alone (using the initial land use data (INIT)), the the model results indicate that both annual water yield and annual sediment export in Nabanhe model results indicate that both annual water yield and annual sediment export in Nabanhe Reserve are likely to increase with climate change by 2070 (p < 0.5)
We conclude that the effects of land use and land management decisions on water yield in Nabanhe
Summary
Ecosystem services (ESS) are defined as the goods and benefits humans gain from healthy and functional ecosystems [1]. Two of the most-used models are SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) [11] and InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-Offs) [12], which are most prominently used in the field of water-, soil- and climate-related ESS research [13]. Output of such modeling efforts can assist land use planners and policy makers and serve as a basis for the development of mitigation and adaptation strategies
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