Contributions of Vegetation Greening and Climate Change to Evapotranspiration Trend after Large-Scale Vegetation Restoration on the Loess Plateau, China
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College of Water Resources and Architecture Engineering, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
2
Key Laboratory of Agricultural Soil and Water Engineering in Arid and Semiarid Areas of Ministry of Education, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Guido D’Urso
Water 2021, 13(13), 1755; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13131755
Received: 10 May 2021
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Revised: 15 June 2021
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Accepted: 18 June 2021
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Published: 25 June 2021
(This article belongs to the Section Hydrology)
Since the early 2000s, the vegetation cover of the Loess Plateau (LP) has increased significantly, which has been fully recorded. However, the effects on relevant eco-hydrological processes are still unclear. Here, we made an investigation on the changes of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) during 2000–2018 and connected them with vegetation greening and climate change in the LP, based on the remote sensing data with correlation and attribution analysis. Results identified that the average annual ETa on the LP exhibited an obvious increasing trend with the value of 9.11 mm yr−1, and the annual ETa trend was dominated by the changes of ETa in the third quarter (July, August, and September). The future trend of ETa was predicted by the Hurst exponent. Partial correlation analysis indicated that annual ETa variations in 87.8% regions of the LP were controlled by vegetation greening. Multiple regression analysis suggested that the relative contributions of potential evapotranspiration (ETp), precipitation, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), to the trend of ETa were 5.7%, −26.3%, and 61.4%, separately. Vegetation greening has a close relationship with the Grain for Green (GFG) project and acts as an essential driver for the long-term development trend of water consumption on the LP. In this research, the potential conflicts of water demanding between the natural ecosystem and social-economic system in the LP were highlighted, which were caused by the fast vegetation expansion.
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Keywords:
evapotranspiration; NDVI; climate change; partial correlation analysis; contribution; loess plateau
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MDPI and ACS Style
Wang, S.; Cui, C.; Dai, Q. Contributions of Vegetation Greening and Climate Change to Evapotranspiration Trend after Large-Scale Vegetation Restoration on the Loess Plateau, China. Water 2021, 13, 1755. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13131755
AMA Style
Wang S, Cui C, Dai Q. Contributions of Vegetation Greening and Climate Change to Evapotranspiration Trend after Large-Scale Vegetation Restoration on the Loess Plateau, China. Water. 2021; 13(13):1755. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13131755
Chicago/Turabian StyleWang, Shuo, Chenfeng Cui, and Qin Dai. 2021. "Contributions of Vegetation Greening and Climate Change to Evapotranspiration Trend after Large-Scale Vegetation Restoration on the Loess Plateau, China" Water 13, no. 13: 1755. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13131755
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