Effects of land use change on inter-annual water fluxes in the semi arid Inner Mongolia
Ranjeet
John, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Toledo, ranjeet.john@utoledo.edu
(Presenting)
Nan
Lu, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Toledo, nlu@utnet.utoledo.edu
Jiquan
Chen, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Toledo, jchen4@utnet.utoledo.edu
Jian
Ni, Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Potsdam, Germany, jian.ni@awi.de
Burkhard
Wilske, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Toledo, bwilske@utnet.utoledo.edu
Land cover/land use in Inner Mongolia, a semi-arid region that is predominantly steppe in Northern Eurasia has undergone significant changes resulting in inter-annual climatic anomalies as well as changes in the local hydrological cycle and energy balance. Climatic trends obtained over the last 50 years for dominant land use/cover types showed increasing annual average and minimum temperature, as well as vapor pressure. The same warming trend was also observed when the annual record was partitioned into spring, fall and winter seasons (1952-2005). We compared IGBP Land cover products derived from MODIS and AVHRR, which showed that the proportion of grassland, agricultural and barren land cover increased while shrubland and forest area decreased. A suite of MODIS derived biophysical variables such as EVI, as well as water content indices such as LSWI and NDSVI were studied in context of LULC types to assess the effects of land cover change as well as degraded grassland and desert steppe. The variability in inter/intra annual trends of NDSVI & LSWI were explained by metrics of climatic variables such as temperature, vapor pressure deficit, relative humidity, and precipitation. Initial results from the 2000-2007 growing seasons suggest that croplands (13.11%) exhibit more water use than grasslands (41.21%), the dominant land cover type.
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