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Climate
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Land-Use/Cover Change Impacts on Climate
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Land-Use/Cover Change Impacts on Climate

A special issue of Climate (ISSN 2225-1154).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2014) | Viewed by 33344

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Nicole Mölders

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA
Interests: human and natural impacts on weather, air quality and climate; land-cover/use impacts on cloud and precipitation formation; pollution in remote locations, wind energy; evaluation of air-quality model results
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Nathaniel A. Brunsell

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
Interests: earth sciences; hydrology; meteorology; remote sensing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The world’s population has more than tripled since 1930. This increase in population has been accompanied with appreciable land-use/cover changes in accordance with the need to meet food demand, to provide housing and fresh water, as well as to meet increasing energy demands through bio-fuels. To accommodate the increasing demands for food, shelter, energy and water, water reservoirs have been established, cities have grown, forests have been cleared, fertilizers have been used, irrigation has been implemented and agricultural cropping decisions have been changed. Often the initiation of the land-use/cover changes goes along with emissions of climate relevant gases and/or aerosols. Concurrently, to the human initiated land-use/cover changes, natural land-use/cover changes occur in unmanaged landscapes in response to climate changes. Such changes could be the expansion/shrinking of ecosystems and alteration of ecosystem structure and function, changes in wildfires frequency, desertification, floods, etc.

All these land-use/cover changes affect the homogeneity/heterogeneity and diversity of landscapes. Thus, land-use/cover changes do not only affect climate via changes in mass and energy cycling (e.g. carbon flux, sensible and latent heat, etc.), but also via altered biogenic or anthropogenic emissions and their distribution, and changes in momentum fluxes.

This special issue is looking for papers that examine the various aspects related to land-use/cover changes on climate at all scales. Studies on the interaction of the biogeochemical and bio-geophysical within the framework of land-use/cover-climate feedbacks as well as papers documenting trends in land-use/cover changes and biogenic emissions are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Nicole Mölders
Dr. Nathaniel Brunsell
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Climate is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.


Keywords

  • Urbanization and megacities
  • Land-use/cover changes
  • Trends in land-use/cover
  • Biome climate modeling
  • Deforestation/aforestation
  • Desertification
  • Impacts of landscape heterogeneity/diversity  on climate
  • Greening of the Arctic
  • Trends in NDVI, ecosystems, land-use/cover

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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926 KiB  
Article
The Effect of Land Cover/Land Use Changes on the Regional Climate of the USA High Plains
by Denis Mutiibwa, Ayse Kilic and Suat Irmak
Climate 2014, 2(3), 153-167; https://doi.org/10.3390/cli2030153 - 11 Aug 2014
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 6853
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 [...] Read more.
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. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Land-Use/Cover Change Impacts on Climate)
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791 KiB  
Article
Using a Risk Cost-Benefit Analysis for a Sea Dike to Adapt to the Sea Level in the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta
by Vo Thanh Danh and Huynh Viet Khai
Climate 2014, 2(2), 78-102; https://doi.org/10.3390/cli2020078 - 28 Apr 2014
Cited by 27 | Viewed by 11326
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to conduct an economic valuation of creating a concrete sea dike system as an adaptation measure to counter the impacts of a rise in sea level using a risk cost-benefit analysis framework. It uses an ex-ante approach [...] Read more.
The purpose of this study is to conduct an economic valuation of creating a concrete sea dike system as an adaptation measure to counter the impacts of a rise in sea level using a risk cost-benefit analysis framework. It uses an ex-ante approach with risk considerations for storms, floods, and salinity by specifying probability distribution functions in a simulation process, in order to incorporate these risk factors into the analysis. The results showed that the benefits of storms and floods avoided dominated the dike options. The benefit of salinity avoided was also valuable, with annual rice and aquaculture productivity losses avoided of USD 331.25 per ha and USD 915 per ha, respectively. This study evaluated a range of dike options to adapt to climate change in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, showing high levels of benefits compared to costs. The larger in scale the dike system options were, the higher the expected net present values (ENPVs) were. Of the dike alternatives applicable to the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, considering the impacts of sea level rise of storms, floods and raised salinity in soil from flooding, small scale dikes that can subsequently be increased in height should be a priority choice. The sensitivity analyses showed that the ENPVs of dike options were very sensitive with changes in discount rate but were not sensitive with increases in salinized areas at all. The findings provide evidence to support the necessity of the construction of a concrete sea dike system in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, given the context of global climate change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Land-Use/Cover Change Impacts on Climate)
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2080 KiB  
Article
Impacts of Urban Development on Precipitation in the Tropical Maritime Climate of Puerto Rico
by Ángel Torres-Valcárcel, Jonathan Harbor, Cesar González-Avilés and Ana Torres-Valcárcel
Climate 2014, 2(2), 47-77; https://doi.org/10.3390/cli2020047 - 22 Apr 2014
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 14159
Abstract
Water is critical for sustaining natural and managed ecosystems, and precipitation is a key component in the water cycle. To understand controls on long-term changes in precipitation for scientific and environmental management applications it is necessary to examine whether local land use and [...] Read more.
Water is critical for sustaining natural and managed ecosystems, and precipitation is a key component in the water cycle. To understand controls on long-term changes in precipitation for scientific and environmental management applications it is necessary to examine whether local land use and land cover change (LULCC) has played a significant role in changing historical precipitation patterns and trends. For the small tropical island of Puerto Rico, where maritime climate is dominant, we used long-term precipitation and land use and land cover data to assess whether there were any detectable impacts of LULCC on monthly and yearly precipitation patterns and trends over the past century. Particular focus was given to detecting impacts from the urban landscape on mesoscale climates across Puerto Rico. We found no statistical evidence for significant differences between average monthly precipitation in urban and non-urban areas directly from surface stations, but, after subdividing by Holdridge Ecological Life Zones (HELZs) in a GIS, there were statistically significant differences (α = 0.05) in yearly average total precipitation between urban and non-urban areas in most HELZs. Precipitation in Puerto Rico has been decreasing over the past century as a result of a decrease in precipitation during periods (months or years) of low rain. However, precipitation trends at particular stations contradict synoptic-scale long-term trends, which suggests that local land use/land cover effects are driving precipitation variability at local scales. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Land-Use/Cover Change Impacts on Climate)
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