Abstract
Land-use/land cover change (LUCC) is one of the fundamental causes of global environmental change. In recent years, understanding the regional climate impact of LUCC has become a hot-discussed topic worldwide. Some studies have explored LUCC impact on regional climate in specific cities, provinces, or farming areas. However, the quick-urbanized areas, which are highly influenced by human activities, have the most severe land-use changes in developing countries, and their climatic impact cannot be ignored. This study aims to identify the impact of land-use change coupled with urbanization on regional temperature and precipitation in the metropolitan areas of middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China by means of spatial analysis and numeric methods. Based on the exploration of land-use change and climate change during 1988–2008, the impact of land-use transition from non-built-up area to built-up area on temperature and precipitation was analyzed. The results indicated that the land-use conversion has affected the regional temperature with an increasing effect in the study area, while the influence on precipitation was not so significant. The results can provide useful information for spatial planning policies in consideration of regional climate change.
Highlights
It is widely recognized that land-use/cover change (LUCC) at local, regional, and global scales is one of the crucial driving factors of global climate change [1, 2]
The greenhouse gases (GHGs) from agricultural land-uses, for instance, are estimated to account for 10–20% of the total global anthropogenic emissions, which has raised a wide range of concern about LUCC impact on climate change [12]
It can obviously be seen that the main conversion type to built-up area in the region was the conversion from cultivated land (Table 2)
Summary
It is widely recognized that land-use/cover change (LUCC) at local, regional, and global scales is one of the crucial driving factors of global climate change [1, 2]. The biogeophyisical feedback mechanism basically manifests the changes of physical features of the earth’s surface such as roughness, surface albedo, soil moisture, and vegetation coverage and structure, which influence the radiation, heat, and moisture exchange process between the surface and the atmosphere [13]. These effects directly result in the changes of surface temperature, humidity, wind speed, and precipitation, bringing more complex climate at large scales [14, 15]. As the direct indicators of biogeophyisical feedback mechanism, land surface temperature and precipitation are useful observational
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