Abstract
Water retention is an important factor in ecosystem services, owing to its relationships with climate and land-cover change; however, quantifying the independent and combined impacts of these variables remains a challenge. We use scenario analysis and the InVEST model to assess individual or combined impacts of climate and land cover on water retention in the Upper Yangtze River Basin. Water retention decreased from 1986 to 2015 at a rate of 2.97 mm/10a in response to increasing precipitation (3.94 mm/10a) and potential evapotranspiration (16.47 mm/10a). The rate of water retention change showed regional variability (from 68 to −18 mm/a), with some eastern regions experiencing an increase and most other regions experiencing a decrease. Farmland showed the highest decrease (10,772 km2), with land mainly converted into forest (58.17%) and shrub land (21.13%) from 2000 to 2015. The impact of climate change (−12.02 mm) on water retention generally was greater than the impact of land cover change (−4.14 mm), at the basin scale. Among 22 climate zones, 77.27% primarily were impacted by climate change; 22.73% primarily were impacted by land cover change. Our results demonstrate that both individualistic and integrated approaches toward climate and vegetation management is necessary to mitigate the impacts of climate change on water resources.
Highlights
Ecosystem services are the beneficial contributions of ecosystems to human societies [1]
∆Qsum = ∆Qclimate + ∆Qlandcover = QS3obs − QS1obs where ∆Qclimate is the impact of climate change on water retention change; ∆Qlandcover is the impact of land cover change on water retention change; ∆Qsum is the combined impact of climate change and land cover change; QS1, QS2, QS3 represents the water retention value in the Scenario 1 (S1), Scenario 2 (S2), Scenario 3 (S3) scenarios respectively, and QS1obs, QS2obs, QS3obs are the average annual value of QS1, QS2, QS3 respectively
We observed a significant increase in water retention in HIC1-II zone (+33.71 mm), HIC1-I zone (+27.57 mm) and IVATe-f zone (+4.13 mm), for example, while significant decreases were observed in the VATe-f-Vzone (−33.04 mm) and VATe-f-IIIzone (−20.83 mm)
Summary
Ecosystem services are the beneficial contributions of ecosystems to human societies [1]. Research in this discipline has been carried out in numerous watersheds around the globe, including the analysis of effects of climate and land-use on surface water extent dynamics in Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin [18], on the water yield of the Tona watershed [19], on water resources and soil erosion in the Dano catchment in south–western Burkina Faso [20], on the water resources in the eastern Baltic Sea [21], on the combined impacts of future land-use and climate on water resources and quality of the Thames River basin in the southern UK [22], and the analysis of land-use change may exacerbate the climate change impacts on water resources in the Upper Ganges river basin in northern India [23] All of these studies assessed the independent or combined effects of climate and land-use impacts, but none assessed their contributions to or regional differences in the impacts on water retention services. Considering the important ecological status of the UYRB, the results of this study provide valuable data for environmental protection and development decisions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt
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