Influence of Land Use Change on the Surface Albedo and Climate Change in the Qinling-Daba Mountains

Fang Zhao,Xincan Lan,Wenbo Zhu,Wuyang Li,Tianqi Li

doi:10.3390/su131810153

Abstract

Land use changes affect the surface radiative budget and energy balance by changing the surface albedo, which generates radiative forcing, impacting the regional and global climate. To estimate the effect of land use changes on the surface albedo and climate change in a mountainous area with complex terrain, we obtained MODIS data, identified the spatial–temporal characteristics of the surface albedo caused by land use changes, and then calculated the radiative forcing based on solar radiative data and the surface albedo in the Qinling-Daba mountains from 2000 to 2015. The correlation between the land use changes and the radiative forcing was analyzed to explore the climate effects caused by land use changes on a kilometer-grid scale in the Qinling-Daba mountains. Our results show that the primarily land use changes were a decrease in the cultivated land area and an increase in the construction land area, as well as other conversions between six land use types from 2000 to 2015. The land use changes led to significant changes in the surface albedo. Meanwhile, the radiative forcing caused by the land use had different magnitudes, strengths, and occurrence ranges, resulting in both warming and cooling climate change effects.

Highlights

According to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange, human activities have affected the climate to various degrees in different ways
This paper explores the influence of land use on albedo and radiative forcing based on changes in the land use, surface albedo, and radiative forcing from 2000 to 2015 in the Qinling-Daba mountains
We examined the variation in the albedo for the major land use change types based on the distribution of the surface albedo

Summary

Introduction

According to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange, human activities have affected the climate to various degrees in different ways. Land use change increases carbon sinks through afforestation [3,4] from a biogeochemical point of view, playing an important role in increasing the absorption of a large amount of carbon [5,6], changing the terrestrial carbon exchange [7], and leading to the attenuation of global warming to a certain extent. Land use change affects energy and water vapor exchange between land surface and atmosphere by changing surface albedo and surface roughness, which indirectly affects the surface radiation budget and energy balance, and has different impacts on regional and global climate [8]. Biogeophysical researchers have offered a different explanation for global climate changes according to variations in the surface albedo [1,3,9,10,11,12,13]. According to Ridgwell [14], an increase of

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Conclusion