Eco-hydrological cycle in upper and middle reaches of Heihe river basin
| Graduate student | Xin Tian |
| Promotors | Prof. Z. Su |
| Co-promotors | Prof. Zengyuan Li |
| Partner | |
| Timeline | April 2007 - April 2011 |
| Sources of funding | Co-funding ITC & CAF |
The human induced ecological deterioration not only threatens the economic future of human population through reducing bio-spheric productivity, but also adversely impact functional processes of energy balance and water cycles through destroying the natural equilibrium of land-surface and atmosphere interactions. Generally, degradation of the water resource in upper catchment catalyzes the related environmental problems of middle and down stream reaches. Moreover, the global climate change, such as warming mainly induced by increase CO2, accelerated such evolution.
Therefore, it is very meaningful to measure and model accurately the eco-hydrological cycle for the aims of sustainable management, protection and restoration of the frail ecosystem, such as that in Heihe River Basin (located at Northwest China). This basin has the uniqueness and sensitivity to the environment change, therefore it has a lot of urgent eco-hydrological issues such as water resource management, water-soil conservation, bio-diversity protection, landscape perspective (frangibility, adaptability and sensitivity) as well as the conflict between the economic development and ecosystem evolution.
In order to assess the role of vegetation in shaping the basin’s hydrological response to climate variability and global climate change, the goals of this study are to use remotely sensed data to characterize historical vegetation variability in the upper and middle reaches of Heihe River Basin, and to develop a combined model of the watershed's hydrology and vegetation capable of replicating that behaviour.
