Abstract
Continuing negative rainfall anomalies, coupled with climate change projections of increased drought severity and frequency, drive an urgent need to increase resilience and integration in land and water management strategies in many regions of the world. However, complex interactions between land cover change, ecohydrological partitioning and water availability are difficult to quantify, especially at different temporal and spatial scales. In conjunction with local stakeholders, we developed plausible, alternative land use scenarios (including forest diversification and agroforestry schemes) based on the existing four primary land use types (i.e., conifer and broadleaved forests, arable agriculture, and pasture) in a 66 km2 drought-sensitive catchment in northern Germany. We used modelling to evaluate spatial and temporal changes in water flux partitioning, storage and ages. The spatially-distributed, tracer-aided ecohydrological model, EcH2O-iso, calibrated using hydrometric, ecohydrological and isotopic data at daily time steps from 2007 to 2019 was used in this assessment. The results showed that replacing conifer forests with uneven-aged mixed forests with younger broad-leaved trees had the greatest potential for reducing total evapotranspiration and increasing groundwater recharge. For coniferous forests, a 50% increase in the proportion of broad-leaved trees was projected to result in an 11% increase in groundwater recharge across the catchment. The mixed-forest management alternatives also reduced groundwater turnover times, which would support more rapid recovery of soil moisture and groundwater stores following droughts. This study demonstrates that such an ecohydrological modelling approach has the potential to contribute useful science-based evidence for policy makers allowing quantitative assessment of potential land use effects on water availability and effective communication with stakeholders.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e15126 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Hydrological Processes |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 2 Apr 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2024 |
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available at (German Meteorological Service, 2020; Myneni et al., 2015; Running et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2021). The model code of EcH2O-iso is publicly available at http://bitbucket.igb-berlin.de:7990/users/ech2o/repos/ech2o_iso/browse (last access: Dec 2022).Funding
Funding was received through the Einstein Research Unit “Climate and Water under Change” from the Einstein Foundation Berlin and Berlin University Alliance (grant no. ERU-2020-609). We acknowledge the use of computational resources of the Climate Geography group of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. We also thank Songjun Wu for his support in setting up the HPC and colleagues from the Finck Foundation (www.finck-stiftung.org) Benedict Boesel and Max Kuester for the trustful collaboration, for providing study site access and their insight knowledge on reasonable and plausible land use scenarios. Contributions from CS were supported by the Leverhulme Trust through the ISO-LAND project (grant no. RPG 2018 375). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. Funding was received through the Einstein Research Unit “Climate and Water under Change” from the Einstein Foundation Berlin and Berlin University Alliance (grant no. ERU‐2020‐609). We acknowledge the use of computational resources of the Climate Geography group of Humboldt‐Universität zu Berlin. We also thank Songjun Wu for his support in setting up the HPC and colleagues from the Finck Foundation ( www.finck-stiftung.org ) Benedict Boesel and Max Kuester for the trustful collaboration, for providing study site access and their insight knowledge on reasonable and plausible land use scenarios. Contributions from CS were supported by the Leverhulme Trust through the ISO‐LAND project (grant no. RPG 2018 375). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Finck Foundation | |
| Einstein Foundation Berlin and Berlin University Alliance | ERU‐2020‐609 |
| The Leverhulme Trust | RPG 2018 375 |
| The Leverhulme Trust |
Keywords
- drought
- ecohydrological modelling
- land use
- tracers
- water age
- water partitioning
Access to Document
- Luo_etal_HP_Assessing_Impacts_of_VOR
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