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The Impact of Land Cover and Land Use Change on the Indian Monsoon Region Hydroclimate

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Abstract

The Indian Monsoon Region (IMR) has undergone notable land cover and land use change (LCLUC) in response to a dramatic increase in population and economic growth. While the changes in characteristics of LCLUC have been documented in various studies, the realistic representation of these changes within a dynamic hydroclimatic framework remains a challenge to the scientific community. This chapter highlights that representing LCLUC changes and feedbacks should be an integral component of short, medium, and long-range predictions over the IMR. Realistic representation of the land conditions can enhance model predictions at different scales. Yet, the LCLUC information is not well represented in atmospheric models, principally due to lack of details in land surface datasets and also due to the limitations of the model parameterizations. The need for developing gridded, high-resolution datasets and models that can ascribe to the changes and build off the sensitivity to the land changes emerge as a focus area. This chapter presents the nature of land cover feedbacks and their influence on the prediction of hydroclimatological extremes over the IMR. It is not intended as a comprehensive review, but more as a synthesis of contemporary studies that have addressed the issue of land surface responses and their feedback as part of land–atmospheric interactions over the region. Current understanding from studies on the impact of LCLUC over different scales of environmental processes and associated principles is also summarized with a particular focus on improving the hydroclimatic predictions over the IMR by considering coupled land–atmosphere interactions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Land use changes refers to changes in land like growing agriculture/vegetation, cutting forests/trees, or building cities) and land cover changes refers to the differences in physical characteristics of land surface such as grass, vegetation, clay, sand or concrete.

  2. 2.

    Satellite cities are smaller cities that are near to a large city that is the center of a metropolitan area. Satellite cities could be separate cities outside of the larger metropolitan areas.

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Niyogi, D. et al. (2018). The Impact of Land Cover and Land Use Change on the Indian Monsoon Region Hydroclimate. In: Vadrevu, K., Ohara, T., Justice, C. (eds) Land-Atmospheric Research Applications in South and Southeast Asia. Springer Remote Sensing/Photogrammetry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67474-2_25

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