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How recent climate change influences water use efficiency in East Asia

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Abstract

Water use efficiency (WUE), defined as the ratio of gross primary productivity to evapotranspiration, is an important indicator of the trade-off between water loss and carbon gain. We used a biophysical process-based model to examine the relative importance of climate-induced changes in meteorological factors and leaf area index (LAI) on the changes in WUE in East Asia. Validation showed that our simulation could capture the magnitudes and variations of WUE at 18 flux sites in Asia. Regional results indicated that the highest WUE occurred in boreal forests at high latitudes and the lowest WUE in desert areas of China. Changes in meteorological factors negatively affected WUE in the northwestern, northern, and eastern study regions. Changes in LAI had determinant impacts on changes in WUE in most areas except for those with sparse or low-density vegetation (e.g., western interior China, southeast island countries) where meteorological factors dominated. We conclude that, aside from the impact of meteorological factors on WUE, climate-induced changes in LAI may play a prominent role in regulating WUE changes.

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Acknowledgments

The work was funded by the National Basic Research Program of China (2010CB833503), National Natural Science Foundation of China (40871240/D011004), Jiangsu Key Laboratory Program of Aro-meteorology of NUIST (KYQ1202), and the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PARO). We thank Prof. Jing M. Chen and Nadine Nesbittat University of Toronto, Alexa Dugan in US Forest Service to provide suggestions and do revisions. We also thank Prof. J. Asanuma at University of Tsukuba and Yingnian Li at Chinese Academy Sciences to provide AsiaFlux and ChinaFlux data. Thanks are also extended to Dr. Hartmut Graßl, and anonymous reviewers for providing constructive comments during the review process.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jiangsu Key laboratory of Agricultural Meteorology, College of Applied Meteorology, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China, 210044

    Fangmin Zhang & Shuanghe Shen

  2. International Institute for Earth System Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, 210093

    Weimin Ju

  3. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy Sciences, Beijing, China, 100101

    Shaoqiang Wang & Guirui Yu

  4. State Key Laboratory of Forest and Soil Ecology, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China, 110164

    Shijie Han

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  1. Fangmin Zhang
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Correspondence to Fangmin Zhang.

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Zhang, F., Ju, W., Shen, S. et al. How recent climate change influences water use efficiency in East Asia. Theor Appl Climatol 116, 359–370 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-013-0949-2

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