Impacts of global change on water resources in Dryland East Asia

Abstract

The vast Dryland East Asia (DEA) area consists of several large geographic regions including the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Loess Plateau, and Mongolia Plateau. T he region is of great importance to the functioning of the earth system under a changing climate. In the past three decades, due to the unprecedented land use/land cover change, urbanization, industrialization and climate change, water stress in many areas in DEA have reached a dangerous level that threatened the sustainability of the region. In addition to reviewing literature for the causes of the water crisis observed in the region, as case studies, we examined water balances at a basin and regional scale using multiple modeling techniques, including a remote sensing-based EC-MOD model, a watershed water balance model (WBMPlus), and an evapotranspiration model calibrated for the Loess Plateau region.

Department

Earth Systems Research Center

Publication Date

1-1-2013

Journal Title

Dryland East Asia: Land Dynamics amid Social and Climate Change

Publisher

DeGruyter

Document Type

Book Chapter

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