The role of vegetation over managed landscapes in modulating land-atmosphere interactions and regional surface climate

Abstract:

Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) influences the Earth system through biogeophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks. LULCC has been recognized as an important anthropogenic forcing on the Earth system. The present consensus indicates that the global mean signal of LULCC induced effects balance each other, resulting in insignificant global mean changes, partly because the surface warming induced by the biogeochemical feedbacks are offset by the cooling induced by biogeophysical feedbacks. However, LULCC is a dominant forcing in areas of major land use transitions, potentially resulting in stronger local to regional feedbacks that are yet poorly understood, and often lack model consensus in terms of the sign of changes in latent heat flux and Bowen ratio, as well as the mechanisms behind these changes, necessitating more through analysis of land parameterizations in coupled Earth system simulations.

In this presentation, I will review previous research on observations and representations of vegetation dynamics over managed landscapes, including irrigation, crop and forest management, and urban green surface, and how they might regulate land-atmosphere interactions and regional surface climate. These studies shed light on potential directions to improve the land model in the unified forecast system (UFS), a community-based, coupled comprehensive end-to-end Earth system data assimilation and prediction system, which serves as the basis for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's next-generation forecast systems at short-range, medium-range, and Subseasonal to Seasonal scales.