Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 5
Simulation of the Plausible Climate
Effects of Ecological Restoration
Programs in China
Qun'ou Jiang, Enjun Ma, Yanfei Li and Anping Liu
This chapter focuses on the climate effect of ecological restoration programs in
China. The fourth assessment report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC AR4) indicated that the human activities are a significant influencing factor of
climate change. Deforestation, grassland degradation, and desertification, which are
mainly induced by human activities, have been greatly intensified due to the irra-
tional exploitation of the natural resources, rapid population growth, and the
expansion of road network in the past decades. Some ecological restoration programs
have been recently carried out, e.g., Green for Grain Project, which can affect the
climate through not only the carbon sink but also the thermal properties of the land
surface. The land cover affects the surface roughness and consequently influences the
transfer of local momentum and heat (Bonan and Pollard
1992
).
Since the mid-1970s, scholars studied the impact of deforestation, grassland
degradation, desertification, irrigation, and other land cover changes by using the
global and regional climate model patterns. According to those researches, it can
be concluded that the land use/cover change alters the land roughness, soil
hydrological and thermal features, which lead to the further changes of the tem-
perature, precipitation, downward shortwave radiation, sensible heat, and latent
heat (Loridan et al.
2011
). Therefore, it is meaningful to study the effects of land
cover change not only on the climate, but also on the energy balance, and it will
provide the significant reference for land use planning and climate adaptation to
explore how the land cover impacts the climate and energy balance.
