Vegetation changes and water cycle in a changing environment

Abstract

Vegetation plays a vital role in the global hydrological cycle, water supply and aquatic functions. How vegetation responds to future environmental change poses one of the largest uncertainties in climate model predictions. Disturbance, both natural (e.g., wildfire, insect outbreaks, disease, windstorms, drought) and anthropogenic (e.g., timber harvesting, land conversion), can have a profound effect on hydrological processes through the impacts on vegetation dynamics. With climate change, natural disturbances are becoming more frequent and catastrophic. This, together with growing human disturbance, will undoubtedly affect water resources and consequently have significant implications for land managers and policy makers.Ecohydrology is a science dealing with the interactions between ecosystems and hydrological processes, and many recent ecohydrological studies have focused on climate-soil-vegetation interactions in both natural and managed systems (e.g., Rodriguez-Iturbe, 2000; D'Odorico et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2012a). Ecohydrology has advanced rapidly in the past few decades, which is reflected in the exponential growth in the number of both publications and citations (Wang et al., 2012b). Despite such advances, a better understanding of both the mechanisms and consequences of vegetation changes for the water cycle is still required to develop effective adaptation strategies that minimize the adverse effects of hydrological alterations. This special issue assembles a collection of 13 research articles to further our understanding of hydrological responses to vegetation dynamics under accelerated environmental and land use changes.The spatial scales of these articles range from individual plants to continent. In particular, this special issue focuses on the following four aspects of recent advances in ecohydrological science.

Published in

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
2018, Volume: 22, number: 3, pages: 1731-1734 Publisher: COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH

SLU Authors

• Bishop, Kevin

  • Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Associated SLU-program

Forest
Climate


Sustainable Development Goals

SDG6 Clean water and sanitation
SDG13 Climate action


UKÄ Subject classification

Oceanography, Hydrology, Water Resources


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-1731-2018

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/94628