Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
5.3.3 Concluding Remarks on the Surface Climatic Effects
of Grassland Degradation
Based on the analysis of grassland change in the future, this study analyzed the
impacts of grassland degradation on the regional climate in the overgrazing areas
of Northwest China through implementing the numerical simulation with the WRF
model. The conclusions of this study are as follows.
(i)
WRF model can simulate the spatial pattern and change of temperature and
precipitation very well, although the simulated value is a bit lower than the
observed value. Besides, the grassland of Northwest China would mainly
degrade into croplands, bare land, and urban land over the next 30 years.
The most obvious grassland change will occur in the central part of Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region, northwest part of Shaanxi Province.
(ii)
The grassland degradation will make the climate change show a dry-warm
trend in the overgrazing areas of Northwest China in the future 30 years.
The impacts of grassland degradation on the climate will vary in different
seasons. In summer, the grassland degradation will lead to the increase of
surface temperature and decrease of precipitation. While in winter, it will
lead to the decrease of both the precipitation and temperature.
(iii)
There are generally various impacts of land cover change on the climate
change. However, this study has only analyzed the effects of grassland
degradation on the temperature and precipitation. Actually there are other
kinds of land use conversion which will also have effects on climate
change, therefore, more land use conversions should be taken into account
in the future research. In addition, there are various factors that influence
the regional climate, but only the land cover change is used to analyze the
impacts of grassland degradation on the regional climate in this study,
which leads to some uncertainties of the results. Therefore, more efforts
should be made in the future researches on the sensitivity test to reduce the
uncertainties of the results.
5.4 Summary
This chapter focused on the climate effect of ecological restoration programs in
China, and carried out three case studies in China. In the first case, we assessed the
potential effects of artificial vegetation change on the regional climate in Jiangxi
Province, China. Based on the simulation with the WRF model, a comparative
analysis was carried out on the future temperature and precipitation under four
hypothetical vegetation cover scenarios. The simulation results indicated that the
vegetation change would have significant effects on the regional climate. The
simulated effects of annual average temperature showed a decreasing order:
evergreen broadleaf [ evergreen needleleaf [ deciduous needleleaf [ deciduous
