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Hydro-climatic effects of future land-cover/land-use change in montane mainland southeast Asia

Climatic Change volume 118, pages 213–226 (2013)Cite this article

Abstract

Regional climate model simulations with RegCM3 were performed to investigate how future land-cover/land-use (LCLU) change in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia (MMSEA) could affect regional climate. Simulation land-surface parameterizations included present day and plausible 2050 land-covers, as well as two extreme deforestation simulations. In the simulations, the original land cover map of RegCM3, based on AVHRR 1992–93 observations, was replaced with one obtained from MODIS 2001 observations; and the model was set to work at two different spatial resolutions using the sub-grid feature of the land surface model: 27.79 km for the atmosphere and 9.26 km for the land surface. During validation, modeled precipitation closely matched observed precipitation over southern China, but underestimated precipitation in the Indochina Peninsula. The plausible 2050 LCLU simulation predicted little change in regional climate. However, an extreme irrigated crop parameterization caused precipitation to increase slightly in the Indochina Peninsula, decrease substantially in southeastern China, and increase significantly in the South China Sea. The extreme short-grass parameterization caused substantial precipitation decreases in MMSEA, but few changes elsewhere. These simulations indicate in order for significant climatological changes to occur, substantially more LCLU conversion is required than the 16 % change we incorporated into the plausible 2050 land-cover scenario.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by NASA (#NNG04GH59G) and APN (ARCP2007-01CMY).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eurasia Institute of Earth Sciences, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Omer L. Sen & Deniz Bozkurt

  2. Center for Applied GIS, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC, USA

    John B. Vogler

  3. East West Center, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Jefferson Fox

  4. Geography Department, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Thomas W. Giambelluca

  5. Geography Department, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Alan D. Ziegler

Authors
  1. Omer L. Sen
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  2. Deniz Bozkurt
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  3. John B. Vogler
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  4. Jefferson Fox
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  5. Thomas W. Giambelluca
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  6. Alan D. Ziegler
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Correspondence to Omer L. Sen.

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Sen, O.L., Bozkurt, D., Vogler, J.B. et al. Hydro-climatic effects of future land-cover/land-use change in montane mainland southeast Asia. Climatic Change 118, 213–226 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0632-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0632-0

Keywords

  • Land Cover
  • Latent Heat Flux
  • Specific Humidity
  • Irrigate Crop
  • Indochina Peninsula