Abstract
In northern China, large-scale reforestations were implemented to restore the ecosystem functions (e.g., hydrology function). However, few studies have been conducted to quantify the relative contributions of forest recovery to water yield in boreal forest region across the globe. In this study, the impacts of forest recovery on the changes in mean annual water yield were assessed in two large forested watersheds in the boreal forest region of northeast China using three different approaches. As commonly considered, the results confirmed that forest recovery was the dominant driver of the reductions in annual water yield in the two watersheds in the past three decades (1987–2016), explaining 64.3% (15.4 mm) and 87.4% (40.7 mm) of variations in annual water yield for Upper Tahe watershed (UTH) and Xinancha watershed (XNC), respectively. By contrast, climate variability played minor role in annual water yield variation, explaining only 35.7% (8.5 mm) and 12.6% (7.2 mm) for UTH and XNC, respectively. The response differences between the two watersheds may mainly be attributed to differences in forest type, topography and climate regimes. This study provided important insight into sustainable forest and water resources management in the region.
Highlights
The large-scale reforestation programs have greatly increased forest coverage in China since the1980s, restoring ecosystem services and benefits of the communities [1]
Our results indicated that the forest recovery was the dominant driver of the reduction in mean annual water yield, −15.4 and −40.7 mm for Upper Tahe watershed (UTH) and Xinancha watershed (XNC) watersheds, respectively
Based on data from two monitored large watersheds, this study proved that forest recovery was the dominant driver to the reduction of mean annual water yield, while the impacts of climate variability were relatively low in the two large forested watersheds in cold region of Northeast China during the past three decades
Summary
The large-scale reforestation programs have greatly increased forest coverage in China since the1980s, restoring ecosystem services and benefits of the communities [1]. Numerous existing studies were dedicated to assessing the impacts of reforestation on water yield globally with varying numbers of watersheds and watershed sizes, as reviewed by Zhang et al [4] and Li et al [5], there exists limited studies [6,7] examining the effects of afforestation and reforestation on water yield in boreal regions, and, a lack of studies in the boreal forest region in China [8] This raises a critical need to study such effects in the boreal regions to enrich our knowledge of the relationship between forest recovery and water resources. Wei et al [11] found that forest change can only explain
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