The increasing contribution of greening to the terrestrial evapotranspiration in China

Genan Wu, Xinchen Lu, Wei Zhao, Ruochen Cao, Wenqi Xie, Liyun Wang, Qiuhong Wang, Jiexuan Song, Shaobo Gao, Shenggong Li and Zhongmin Hu

Ecological Modelling, 2023, vol. 477, issue C

Abstract: Evapotranspiration (ET) in terrestrial ecosystems is of great significance for water resource evaluation, crop water requirements, and drought monitoring and is affected by multiple environmental factors. Several studies investigated the environmental factors affecting evapotranspiration with long time series, but there are few detailed research exploring changes in the dominant controls of ET. It is essential to understand the primary mechanisms involved and their response to climate change. In this study, we analyzed the dominant controls on ET using variable importance in projection (VIP) scores from a Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) analysis and then explored the change of dominant controls over time. Our results indicated a significant ET increase trend over 1982–2015 of 1.40 mm/year in China, with solar radiation (SR), temperature (T), and leaf area index (LAI), as the dominant controls contributing to the increasing changes of ET. Increase in LAI (greening) was the primary cause of increasing ET over the 1982–2015 period, especially in temperate monsoon climate regions. In contrast, the VIP scores of SR and T indicated a negative contribution to increasing ET during the 34 years. The differences in the contribution dynamics of dominant controls to ET may result from different sensitivities to canopy resistance in different vegetation types. This research revealed an increasing contribution of greening to terrestrial evapotranspiration in China and improved our understanding of the change of dominant controls over China from 1982 to 2015 and their influence to ET under the changing climate and its impact.

Keywords: Evapotranspiration models; Dominant controls; Climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:477:y:2023:i:c:s0304380023000017

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2023.110273

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