Regional climate responses to the land use and land cover change in Heihe River Basin, China

Land use and land cover play an essential role in the process of land-atmosphere interaction, and their changes influence regional climate in complicated ways. This function is also regarded as a more important driving force in an arid area, where vegetation changes will greatly alter energy and water distribution at watershed scale, and further influence ecological balance and agricultural production. To explore the regional climate response to the land use and land cover change in Heihe River Basin, three vegetation change scenarios in 1998 summer are designed in RegCM3 (a regional climate model), and the variation of temperature and precipitation are analyzed. Results show that: 1) the increase of vegetation area in mountainous area will bring about temperature decline and precipitation growth in summer. 2) With the expansion of farmland, precipitation will increase slightly in the mountainous and oasis area, and temperature and precipitation will decrease in desert and semi-desert. 3) The spread of desert area will cause temperature rise and precipitation decrease in whole area.