Abstract
The Loess Plateau is a severely eroded and very venerable area in the northwestern China. Large scale vegetation restoration has been conducted in this region during the recent decades, its effect on the regional ecohydrology is under concern. In this study, long term satellite and derived data were used to analyze regional hydrological condition at the major part of the Loess Plateau (35°-37°N and 105°-110° E). The results indicate that there was an increase in the regional normalized difference vegetation index, evapotranspiration, rainfall intensity, soil water storage (surface 1m layer) and runoff. It was also observed that the total annual precipitation did not change significantly.The possible mechanisms may be related to the complicated processes of vegetation on ecohydrology. Our results and approach may be useful to evaluate the benefits of ecological restoration and further vegetation restoration at the Loess Plateau and other regions.
Highlights
The Loess Plateau is located in the northwestern China with an area of 620,000 km2 including the provinces of Shanxi, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, and Nei Monggol Autonomous Region
The water storage at vegetation canopy was positively correlated with Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) (R2= 0.615, p < 0.05) (Figure 8c). 3.7 Near Surface Air Specific Humidity The monthly near surface air specific humidity decreased slightly from 1998 to 2013 (Figure 9a)
Evapotranspiration and the water intercepted by vegetation canopy increased, but the land surface air specific humidity did not increased significantly there is a positive correlation between NDVI and air specific humidity
Summary
The Loess Plateau is located in the northwestern China with an area of 620,000 km (about 6.6% of the entire land of China) including the provinces of Shanxi, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, and Nei Monggol Autonomous Region. Due to the combined effects of heavy rainfalls during summer, steep topography, low vegetation cover, and highly erodible loess soil, the Loess Plateau is one of the most severely eroded areas in the world (Zhang & Liu, 2005). Agricultural practice and coal mining, the soil erosion rate reached 9,370 t km-2yr-1 during 19661999. In order to control soil erosion and improve local environmental quality in this region, the Chinese government has dedicated much effort to conduct several large ecological restoration projects since 1980s, such as Natural Forest Conservation Project and Green for Grain Project. The vegetation coverage increased from 29.7% in 1998 to 42.3% in 2005 and 59.6% in 2013 (Cao et al, 2009; Chen et al, 2015)
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