Impacts of Climate Change on Soil Erosion in the Great Lakes Region

Lili Wang,Dennis Flanagan,Keith Cherkauer

doi:10.3390/w10060715

Abstract

Quantifying changes in potential soil erosion under projections of changing climate is important for the sustainable management of land resources, as soil loss estimates will be helpful in identifying areas susceptible to erosion, targeting future erosion control efforts, and/or conservation funding. Therefore, the macro-scale Variable Infiltration Capacity—Water Erosion Prediction Project (VIC-WEPP) soil erosion model was utilized to quantify soil losses under three climate change scenarios (A2, A1B, B1) using projections from three general circulation models (GFDL, PCM, HadCM3) for the Great Lakes region from 2000 to 2100. Soil loss was predicted to decrease throughout three future periods (2030s, 2060s, and 2090s) by 0.4–0.7 ton ha−1 year−1 (4.99–23.2%) relative to the historical period (2000s) with predicted air temperature increases of 0.68–4.34 °C and precipitation increases of 1.74–63.7 mm year−1 (0.23–8.6%). In the forested northern study domain erosion kept increasing by 0.01–0.18 ton ha−1 year−1 over three future periods due to increased precipitation of 9.7–68.3 mm year−1. The southern study domain covered by cropland and grassland had predicted soil loss decreases of 0.01–1.43 ton ha−1 year−1 due to air temperature increases of 1.75–4.79 °C and reduced precipitation in the summer. Fall and winter had greater risks of increased soil loss based on predictions for these two seasons under the A2 scenario, with the greatest cropland soil loss increase due to increased fall precipitation, and combined effects of increases in both precipitation and air temperature in the winter. Fall was identified with higher risks under the A1B scenario, while spring and summer were identified with the greatest risk of increased soil losses under the B1 scenario due to the increases in both precipitation and air temperature.

Highlights

It is critically important to clarify climate change impacts on soil loss to support the large-scale policies of land resource management and soil conservation in the U.S Great Lakes region, which suffers from water quality degradation caused by agricultural nonpoint source pollution
Though model calibration and validation is done in Mao and Cherkaur [27], to make sure the model reliability in estimating the soil loss, parameter uncertainty analysis is done in Waseca, IN
The five parameters are frequently used in the VIC model application studies to calibrate model for streamflow estimation [5,12,44] and used for VIC-Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model evaluation [27] about soil loss estimation

Summary

Introduction

It is critically important to clarify climate change impacts on soil loss to support the large-scale policies of land resource management and soil conservation in the U.S Great Lakes region, which suffers from water quality degradation caused by agricultural nonpoint source pollution. Climate change studies of the Great Lakes region indicate projected increases in both precipitation and air temperatures [1,2,3]. Mean annual air temperature is projected to increase by 2.2 ◦ C to 5.8 ◦ C with more frequently occurring extreme heat events and more common heavy precipitation events [4,5,6]. Changes in air temperatures affect soil erosion processes through their influence on erosion driving factors: rates of runoff generation and soil infiltration [7,8,9,10,11]. Air temperature changes the soil evapotranspiration (ET) rate and soil moisture content, which in turn affects runoff generation and soil infiltration both of which control erosion processes [9,10].

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion