GC065-04
Planetary resilience jeopardized by homogenization of the terrestrial water cycle
Thursday, 10 December 2020: 19:12
Virtual
Delphis F Levia Jr1, Irena F Creed2, David M Hannah3, Kazuki Nanko4, Elizabeth W Boyer5, Darryl E Carlyle-Moses6, Nick Van De Giesen7, Domenico Grasso8, Andrew J Guswa9, Janice Elaine Hudson10, Sean Hudson10, Shin' ichi Iida11, Robert B Jackson12, Gabriel George Katul13, Tomo'omi Kumagai14, Pilar Llorens15, Flavio Lopes Ribeiro10, Diane E Pataki16, Catherine A Peters17, Daniel Sanchez Carretero10, John S Selker18, Doerthe Tetzlaff19, Maciej Zalewski20 and Michael P Bruen21, (1)University of Delaware, Departments of Geography and Spatial Sciences & Plant and Soil Sciences, Newark, DE, United States, (2)University of Saskatchewan, School of Environment and Sustainability, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, (3)University of Birmingham, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Birmingham, B15, United Kingdom, (4)FFPRI, Ibaraki, Japan, (5)Penn State University, University Park, PA, United States, (6)Thompson Rivers University, Geography and Environmental Studies, Kamloops, BC, Canada, (7)Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft, Netherlands, (8)University of Michigan- Dearborn, Dearborn, MI, United States, (9)Smith College, Picker Engineering Program, Northampton, MA, United States, (10)University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States, (11)Forestry & Forest Products Research Institute, Department of Disaster Prevention, Meteorology and Hydrology, Ibaraki, Japan, (12)Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States, (13)Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States, (14)The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Tokyo, Japan, (15)Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain, (16)University of Utah, Department of Biology, Salt Lake City, UT, United States, (17)Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States, (18)Oregon State University, Biological and Ecological Engineering, Corvallis, OR, United States, (19)University of Aberdeen, Northern Rivers Institute, Aberdeen, United Kingdom, (20)University of Lodz, Department of Applied Ecology, Lodz, Poland, (21)Univ College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Abstract:
Policy instruments that change land cover to increase carbon sequestration and meet food, water and energy demands are changing the hydrologic cycle in ways that risk unintended, global consequences. We call on both natural and social scientists to examine water resource issues with a particular focus on large-scale changes in land cover. Recognizing risks associated with large-scale land cover changes, such as the conversion of natural forests to plantation forestry (commodities), we must quantify how the resulting losses in plant diversity affect the water cycle and reduce planetary resilience to change. Land-use changes are homogenizing the water cycle, which is the limiting and constraining of the range of vegetation-atmosphere interactions and a consequential decrease in their ability to respond to stress. Land-use driven homogenization of the water cycle will have consequences for rainfall recycling and downstream water supplies for people. We believe that changes in land-use systems are pushing water-vegetation interactions towards a more homogenized water cycle over vast regions of the planet and are placing human health and well-being at risk. Specifically, transpiration, interception, evaporation, the routing of precipitation to the soil, and groundwater recharge all become more rigidly constrained with a reduction in plant diversity, thereby undermining the natural variability in ecosystem response. We offer a blueprint to more holistically examine the causal linkages and the consequences of large-scale uniformity of land cover on the water cycle.
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Funding note: This work stems from the Ettersburg Ecohydrology Workshop and was funded by the UNIDEL Foundation, Inc. and University of Delaware.
