The Effect of Land Cover/Land Use Changes on the Regional Climate of the USA High Plains

Denis Mutiibwa,Suat Irmak,Ayse Kilic

doi:10.3390/cli2030153

Denis Mutiibwa, Suat Irmak + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/cli2030153

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Abstract

We present the detection of the signatures of land use/land cover (LULC) changes on the regional climate of the US High Plains. We used the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) as a proxy of LULC changes and atmospheric CO2 concentrations as a proxy of greenhouse gases. An enhanced signal processing procedure was developed to detect the signatures of LULC changes by integrating autoregression and moving average (ARMA) modeling and optimal fingerprinting technique. The results, which are representative of the average spatial signatures of climate response to LULC change forcing on the regional climate of the High Plains during the 26 years of the study period (1981–2006), show a significant cooling effect on the regional temperatures during the summer season. The cooling effect was attributed to probable evaporative cooling originating from the increasing extensive irrigation in the region. The external forcing of atmospheric CO2 was included in the study to suppress the radiative warming effect of greenhouse gases, thus, enhancing the LULC change signal. The results show that the greenhouse gas radiative warming effect in the region is significant, but weak, compared to the LULC change signal. The study demonstrates the regional climatic impact of anthropogenic induced atmospheric-biosphere interaction attributed to LULC change, which is an additional and important climate forcing in addition to greenhouse gas radiative forcing in High Plains region.

Highlights

Extensive land use/land cover changes (LULC) and their climate forcing represent an important human influence on atmospheric temperature trends [1]
By integrating auto-regression moving average (ARMA) modeling and the optimal fingerprinting technique, an enhanced signal processing procedure was developed to detect the signals of LULC changes on the regional climate of the US High Plains
The results, which are representatives of the average spatial signatures of climate response to LULC change forcing on the regional climate of the High Plains during the 26 years of the study period, show a significant cooling effect on the regional climate during the summer season

Summary

Introduction

Extensive land use/land cover changes (LULC) and their climate forcing represent an important human influence on atmospheric temperature trends [1]. Several studies using both modeled and observed data have documented the perturbation and impacts of LULC changes on climate (e.g., [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]). The proxy investigated for the forcing on the regional climate due to LULC change is the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The index has been widely used to study and monitor vegetation coverage, change, and development in several ecosystems

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