Increased Vegetation Greenness Aggravates Water Conflicts during Lasting and Intensifying Drought in the Poyang Lake Watershed, China

Clicks: 160
ID: 114142
2018
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Steady

Ranked #40 of 43 articles by views in forests

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Abstract
An increase in vegetation greenness can improve ecosystem productivity, but also reduce the water supply, creating the potential for conflicting water demands between ecosystems and humans. This problem has been well-assessed and is most evident in dry environments. However, in humid regions, the potential effects of vegetation greenness on water yields under drought conditions are not well understood. To address this gap, we focused on the Poyang Lake watershed in the humid region of southern China. Based on the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index and a satellite-derived leaf area index dataset during the growing seasons of 1984 to 2013, several typical dry growing seasons were selected as the study conditions. An existing Water Supply Stress Index model was modified to investigate how the changes in vegetation greenness affected water yield and to explore potentially conflicting water demands between ecosystems and humans under drought conditions. Our results showed that an increase of 20–80% in vegetation greenness generally resulted in a reduction of 3–27% in water yield under drought conditions. Large reductions in water yield mainly were observed in forested areas due to large increases in forest greenness. Moreover, increased vegetation greenness caused a 2 to 3 times greater reduction in water yield during continuing and intensifying droughts than during a short moderate drought period. Thus, in this study, during continuing and intensifying droughts, increased vegetation greenness can cause or aggravate water conflicts in sub-watersheds with high forest cover and high human water demands. Therefore, given the increasing frequency of extreme climatic events, afforestation with a targeted approach should be implemented as it would provide the most benefits. In addition, selective harvesting in forested areas with high density could be an effective strategy to maintain water supply in humid regions.
Reference Key
tang2018forestsincreased Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Lin-Ling Tang;Xiao-Bin Cai;Wei-Shu Gong;Jian-Zhong Lu;Xiao-Ling Chen;Qian Lei;Gong-Liang Yu;Tang, Lin-Ling;Cai, Xiao-Bin;Gong, Wei-Shu;Lu, Jian-Zhong;Chen, Xiao-Ling;Lei, Qian;Yu, Gong-Liang;
Journal forests
Year 2018
DOI
10.3390/f9010024
URL
Keywords

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.