How Do Terrestrial Determinants Impact the Response of Water Quality to Climate Drivers?—An Elasticity Perspective on the Water–Land–Climate Nexus

Afed U. Khan, Jiping Jiang, Ashish Sharma, Peng Wang and Jehanzeb Khan
Additional contact information
Afed U. Khan: School of Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China
Jiping Jiang: School of Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China
Ashish Sharma: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Peng Wang: School of Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China
Jehanzeb Khan: Department of Horticulture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 11, 1-20

Abstract: Investigating water–land–climate interactions is critical for urban development and watershed management. This study examined this nexus by elasticity and statistical approaches through the lens of three watersheds: The Yukon, Mekong and Murray. Here, this study reports the fundamental characteristics, explanations and ecological and management implications of terrestrial determinant influence on the response of water quality to climate drivers. The stability of the response, measured by climate elasticity of water quality (CEWQ), is highly dependent on terrestrial determinants, with strong impacts from anthropogenic biomes and low impacts from surficial geology. Compared to temperature elasticity, precipitation elasticity of water quality is more unstable due to its possible linkages with many terrestrial determinants. Correlation and linear models were developed for the interaction system, which uncovered many interesting scenarios. The results implied that watersheds with a higher ratio of rangeland biomes have a lower risk of instability as compared to watersheds with a higher proportion of dense settlement, cropland and forested biomes. This study discusses some of the most essential pathways where instability might adversely affect CEWQ parameters and recommends suggestions for policy makers to alleviate the instability impacts to bring sustainability to the water environment.

Keywords: water quality; temperature elasticity; precipitation elasticity; anthropogenic biomes; surficial geology; nexus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/11/2118/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/11/2118/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:11:p:2118-:d:119373

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().