Impacts of forest loss on local climate across the conterminous United States: Evidence from satellite time-series observations

Yang Li; Yanlan Liu; Gil Bohrer; Yongyang Cai; Aaron Wilson; Tongxi Hu; Zhihao Wang; Kaiguang Zhao

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149651

Impacts of forest loss on local climate across the conterminous United States: Evidence from satellite time-series observations

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Jan 1:802:149651. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149651. Epub 2021 Aug 14.

Authors

Yang Li¹, Yanlan Liu², Gil Bohrer³, Yongyang Cai⁴, Aaron Wilson⁵, Tongxi Hu⁶, Zhihao Wang⁷, Kaiguang Zhao⁸

Affiliations

¹ Environmental Science Graduate Program, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Electronic address: li.10015@osu.edu.
² School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; School of Earth Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
³ Environmental Science Graduate Program, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
⁴ Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
⁵ Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Department of Extension, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
⁶ Environmental Science Graduate Program, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
⁷ Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
⁸ Environmental Science Graduate Program, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Electronic address: zhao.1423@osu.edu.

PMID: 34525747
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149651

Abstract

Forest disturbances alter land biophysics. Their impacts on local climate and land surface temperature (LST) cannot be directly measured by comparing pre- and post-disturbance observations of the same site over time (e.g., due to confounding such as background climate fluctuations); a common remedy is to compare spatially-adjacent undisturbed sites instead. This space-for-time substitution ignores the inherent biases in vegetation between two paired sites, interannual variations, and temporal dynamics of forest recovery. Besides, there is a lack of observation-based analyses at fine spatial resolutions capable of capturing spatial heterogeneity of small-scale forest disturbances. To address these limitations, here we report new satellite analyses on local climate impacts of forest loss at 30 m resolution. Our analyses combined multiple long-term satellite products (e.g., albedo and evapotranspiration [ET]) at 700 sites across major climate zones in the conterminous United States, using time-series trend and changepoint detection methods. Our method helped isolate the biophysical changes attributed to disturbances from those attributed to climate backgrounds and natural growth. On average, forest loss increased surface albedo, decreased ET, and reduced leaf area index (LAI). Net annual warming-an increase in LST-was observed after forest loss in the arid/semiarid, northern, tropical, and temperate regions, dominated by the warming from decreased ET and attenuated by the cooling from increased albedo. The magnitude of post-disturbance warming was related to precipitation; climate zones with greater precipitation showed stronger and longer warming. Reduction in leaf or LAI was larger in evergreen than deciduous forests, but the recovery in LAI did not always synchronize with those of albedo and ET. Overall, this study presents new evidence of biophysical effects of forest loss on LST at finer spatial resolutions; our time-series method can be further leveraged to derive local policy-relevant ecosystem climate regulation metrics or support model-based climate-biosphere studies.

Keywords: Albedo; Biophysical effects; Evapotranspiration; Forest loss; Local land surface temperature.

MeSH terms

Climate
Climate Change*
Ecosystem*
Forests
Temperature
United States