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Title: Impact of vegetation dynamics on hydrological processes in a semi-arid basin by using a land surface-hydrology coupled model

Journal Article · · Journal of Hydrology

Land surface models (LSMs) are widely used to understand the interactions between hydrological processes and vegetation dynamics, which is important for the attribution and prediction of regional hydrological variations. However, most LSMs have large uncertainties in their representations of ecohydrological processes due to deficiencies in hydrological parameterizations. In this study, the Community Land Model version 4 (CLM4) LSM was modified with an advanced runoff generation and flow routing scheme, resulting in a new land surface-hydrology coupled model, CLM-GBHM. Both models were implemented in the Wudinghe River Basin (WRB), which is a semi-arid basin located in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, China. Compared with CLM, CLM-GBHM increased the Nash Sutcliffe efficiency for daily river discharge simulation (1965–1969) from 0.03 to 0.23 and reduced the relative bias in water table depth simulations (2010–2012) from 32.4% to 13.4%. The CLM-GBHM simulations with static, remotely sensed and model-predicted vegetation conditions showed that the vegetation in the WRB began to recover in the 2000s due to the Grain for Green Program but had not reached the same level of vegetation cover as regions in natural eco-hydrological equilibrium. Compared with a simulation using remotely sensed vegetation cover, the simulation with a dynamic vegetation model that considers only climate-induced change showed a 10.3% increase in evapotranspiration, a 47.8% decrease in runoff, and a 62.7% and 71.3% deceleration in changing trend of the outlet river discharge before and after the year 2000, respectively. We conclude this result suggests that both natural and anthropogenic factors should be incorporated in dynamic vegetation models to better simulate the eco-hydrological cycle.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); National Key Research and Development Program of China
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830; 91225302; 2016YFC0402404; 2016YFC0402406; AC05-76RLO1830
OSTI ID:
1390426
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1550124
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-127005; KP1702030
Journal Information:
Journal of Hydrology, Vol. 551, Issue C; ISSN 0022-1694
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 57 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (8)

Simulating and mapping the spatial and seasonal effects of future climate and land -use changes on ecosystem services in the Yanhe watershed, China journal October 2017
Assessment of Climate Change and Associated Vegetation Cover Change on Watershed-Scale Runoff and Sediment Yield journal July 2019
AGCT: a hybrid model for identifying abrupt and gradual change in hydrological time series journal July 2019
A unique vadose zone model for shallow aquifers: the Hetao irrigation district, China journal January 2019
Reconciling the Attribution of Changes in Streamflow Extremes From a Hydroclimate Perspective journal June 2018
Changes in Vegetation Greenness in the Upper and Middle Reaches of the Yellow River Basin over 2000–2015 journal April 2019
More severe hydrological drought events emerge at different warming levels over the Wudinghe watershed in northern China journal January 2019
Improving the Predictive Skill of a Distributed Hydrological Model by Calibration on Spatial Patterns With Multiple Satellite Data Sets text January 2020

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