Not vegetation itself but mis-revegetation reduces water resources
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t vegetation itself but mis-revegetation reduces water resources 1†
Guoyi ZHOU , Jun XIA 1
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, Ping ZHOU , Tingting SHI & Lin LI
Institute of Ecology and School of Applied Meteorology, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China; 2 State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China; 3 Research Center of Water Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; 4 Guangdong Open Laboratory of Geospatial Information Technology and Application, Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510070, China Received May 18, 2020; revised July 28, 2020; accepted August 14, 2020; published online October 14, 2020
Abstract Increasing greening of planet Earth to slow down the rise of atmospheric CO2 concentrations is certainly desirable; however, its consequences on water resources are less affirmative and thus are a matter of wide concern. China, as the largest and most successful country of the world in terms of artificial revegetation, is naturally the focus of the concerns and warnings. Based on previous studies, we analyzed the mechanism for the effects of climate and watershed characteristics on water resources, explained various hydrological results and phenomena, and considered the ways in which water consumption by artificial revegetation projects can be reduced. Moreover, some guidelines are suggested for artificial revegetation at watershed scale with consideration of water resource sustainability. The findings of this study highlight the need for more top-down approaches when studying the mechanism of “forest and water”. Keywords Citation:
Greening, Climate, Revegetation, Water resources, Top-down approaches
Zhou G, Xia J, Zhou P, Shi T, Li L. 2020. Not vegetation itself but mis-revegetation reduces water resources. Science China Earth Sciences, 63, https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11430-020-9670-x
1. Introduction The relationship between vegetation change and water resources or water yield (referring to the total amount of liquid water) is not only an important theoretical issue in the fields of water resources and ecology, but also a vital topic in practical ecological restoration and protection. Over the past few decades, artificial afforestation and revegetation have been carried out throughout China, including more than a dozen national-scale ecological projects, causing the nation to become the largest and most successful country of the world in terms of vegetation restoration. However, these actions have caused widespread concerns relating to the increased consumption of water resources. People often as-
* Corresponding author (email: [email protected]) † Corresponding author (email: [email protected])
sociate the change of river runoff in downstream areas with vegetation restoration activities in the upper reaches. Zastrow (2019) even warned that China’s afforestation actions may exacerbate water scarcity. This raises the questions of where such worries and
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