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Revegetation in China’s Loess Plateau is approaching sustainable water resource limits

Nature climate change, 2016-11, Vol.6 (11), p.1019-1022 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

Copyright Nature Publishing Group Nov 2016 ;Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ;ISSN: 1758-678X ;EISSN: 1758-6798 ;DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3092

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  • Title:
    Revegetation in China’s Loess Plateau is approaching sustainable water resource limits
  • Author: Feng, Xiaoming ; Fu, Bojie ; Piao, Shilong ; Wang, Shuai ; Ciais, Philippe ; Zeng, Zhenzhong ; Lü, Yihe ; Zeng, Yuan ; Li, Yue ; Jiang, Xiaohui ; Wu, Bingfang
  • Subjects: Carbon sequestration ; Climate change ; Continental interfaces, environment ; Ecosystems ; Environmental economics ; Environmental science ; Freshwater ; Hydrology ; Ocean, Atmosphere ; Precipitation ; Productivity ; Sciences of the Universe ; Vegetation
  • Is Part Of: Nature climate change, 2016-11, Vol.6 (11), p.1019-1022
  • Description: Revegetation of degraded ecosystems provides opportunities for carbon sequestration and bioenergy production. However, vegetation expansion in water-limited areas creates potentially conflicting demands for water between the ecosystem and humans. Current understanding of these competing demands is still limited. Here, we study the semi-arid Loess Plateau in China, where the 'Grain to Green' large-scale revegetation programme has been in operation since 1999. As expected, we found that the new planting has caused both net primary productivity (NPP) and evapotranspiration (ET) to increase. Also the increase of ET has induced a significant (p < 0.001) decrease in the ratio of river runoff to annual precipitation across hydrological catchments. From currently revegetated areas and human water demand, we estimate a threshold of NPP of 400 ± 5 g C m-2 yr-1 above which the population will suffer water shortages. NPP in this region is found to be already close to this limit. The threshold of NPP could change by -36% in the worst case of climate drying and high human withdrawals, to +43% in the best case. Our results develop a new conceptual framework to determine the critical carbon sequestration that is sustainable in terms of both ecological and socio-economic resource demands in a coupled anthropogenic-biological system.
  • Publisher: London: Nature Publishing Group
  • Language: English
  • Identifier: ISSN: 1758-678X
    EISSN: 1758-6798
    DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3092
  • Source: AUTh Library subscriptions: ProQuest Central
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