Abstract
Land-use change has a potentially large impact on local water resources and climatic conditions in montane rainforest ecosystems of the Andes. Based on local meteorological observations and site-specific simulation studies involving a coupled hydrological model and a soil–vegetation–atmosphere transfer scheme, we are able to predict likely changes of water and energy fluxes for different land-use categories. To anticipate the effect of future land-use change on the water and energy budgets of the study area, we use results of statistically derived land-use scenarios and a coupled plot scale model representing the dominant land-use types for further upscaling. After assessing the impact of land-use change on ecosystem services we conclude that climate regulation will be decreasing due to a likely increase in drought vulnerability and that the discharge will remain stable or even slightly increase, thereby positively effecting provisioning and regulating hydrological services.
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Windhorst, D. et al. (2013). Impacts of Local Land-Use Change on Climate and Hydrology. In: Bendix, J., et al. Ecosystem Services, Biodiversity and Environmental Change in a Tropical Mountain Ecosystem of South Ecuador. Ecological Studies, vol 221. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38137-9_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38137-9_20
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