Impacts of Local Land-Use Change on Climate and Hydrology

Abstract

Land-use change has a potentially large impact on local water resources and climatic conditions in montane rainforest ecosystems of the Andes. Based on local meteorological observations and site-specific simulation studies involving a coupled hydrological model and a soil–vegetation–atmosphere transfer scheme, we are able to predict likely changes of water and energy fluxes for different land-use categories. To anticipate the effect of future land-use change on the water and energy budgets of the study area, we use results of statistically derived land-use scenarios and a coupled plot scale model representing the dominant land-use types for further upscaling. After assessing the impact of land-use change on ecosystem services we conclude that climate regulation will be decreasing due to a likely increase in drought vulnerability and that the discharge will remain stable or even slightly increase, thereby positively effecting provisioning and regulating hydrological services.