Assessment of ecosystem resilience to hydroclimatic disturbances in India
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
| Veröffentlicht in: | Global change biology. - 1999. - 24(2018), 2 vom: 23. Feb., Seite e432-e441 |
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| Format: | Online-Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | English |
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2018
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| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | Global change biology |
| Schlagworte: | Journal Article climate change droughts ecosystem resilience evapotranspiration net primary productivity water use efficiency Water 059QF0KO0R Carbon |
| Zusammenfassung: | © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Recent studies have shown an increasing trend in hydroclimatic disturbances like droughts, which are anticipated to become more frequent and intense under global warming and climate change. Droughts adversely affect the vegetation growth and crop yield, which enhances the risks to food security for a country like India with over 1.2 billion people to feed. Here, we compared the response of terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP) to hydroclimatic disturbances in India at different scales (i.e., at river basins, land covers, and climate types) to examine the ecosystems' resilience to such adverse conditions. The ecosystem water use efficiency (WUEe : NPP/Evapotranspiration) is an effective indicator of ecosystem productivity, linking carbon (C) and water cycles. We found a significant difference (p < .05) in WUEe across India at different scales. The ecosystem resilience analysis indicated that most of the river basins were not resilient enough to hydroclimatic disturbances. Drastic reduction in WUEe under dry conditions was observed for some basins, which highlighted the cross-biome incapability to withstand such conditions. The ecosystem resilience at land cover and climate type scale did not completely relate to the basin-scale ecosystem resilience, which indicated that ecosystem resilience at basin scale is controlled by some other ecohydrological processes. Our results facilitate the identification of the most sensitive regions in the country for ecosystem management and climate policy making, and highlight the need for taking sufficient adaptation measures to ensure sustainability of ecosystems |
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| Beschreibung: | Date Completed 15.10.2018 Date Revised 15.10.2018 published: Print-Electronic Citation Status MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 1365-2486 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/gcb.13874 |