Impact of Land use Change on Precipitation and Temperature Trends in an Arid Environments

Author: Mehdi Zarei*, Reza Ghazavi**, Abbasali Vali*** and Khodayar Abdollahi****

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Abstract

Precipitation and temperature are the major variables in climatological and hydrological systems, especially in arid regions. The main aim of this study was to investigate the trend of precipitation and temperature of an arid area in the monthly and annual time scales. The possible relation of these climate change with anthropogenic behavior was also investigated. Observational data for temperature (12 stations) and precipitation (22 stations) have been obtained from Iran Water Resource Management Company during 1986-2012. The non-parametric method and remote sensing (RS) technology was used to analyze the possibility effects of land use and climate change on precipitation and temperature trends. The trends in precipitation and temperature were detected using Man-Kendall and Spearman's Rho tests. The LULC maps for the study area were produced using remote sensing and satellite images for the years of 1987 and 2013. The results of this study indicate that monthly precipitation had an in

Keywords

Precipitation, Temperature, Nonparametric trend tests, Land use change, Climate change

Conclusion

Trends in temperature and precipitation, also variations in land-use change were analyzed in an arid and semi-arid region of Iran. The results revealed increasing and decreasing trends in precipitation at different temporal scales, whereas only increasing trend in temperature were found at a monthly time scale. A positive significant trends in annual Tmax at Mashhad, Torogh, Bar, Sarakhs, Yengeje and Shamkhal stations were observed (P< 0.05). According to results, increasing in Tmax were more notable than those in Tmin time series. Results of land use change detection analysis showed an increase in agricultural irrigated land and residential (especially due to urbanization), whereas rangeland area was decreased significantly. As a result of urbanization in the study area, increasing trends in annual Tmax were noted in the stations located in the area that experienced more urbanization development. Results indicated that some parts of vegetated area that were converted to bare land have

References

Climate change is known as the major environmental issue in the world (IPCC. 2007; Qian Cao et al, 2016). In order to evaluate the global warming and develop climate impact researches, trend detection has been found as an interesting subject for both climatological and hydrological studies. Therefore, trend detection researches in hydrological and climatological characteristics such as precipitation, temperature, runoff, evaporation and ground water are used to investigate climate change and global warming. Nowadays, better understanding of trend analysis of long-term temperature and precipitation has been the main topic of climate and water resources researchers (Safari 2012). Temperature and precipitation are fundamental elements of climate and changes in their pattern can affect climatology and hydrology regimes (Gunawardhana and So, 2011). Both of them are highly variable temporarily and spatially at local, regional and global scales, so the evaluation of their trends is importa

How to cite this article

Mehdi Zarei, Reza Ghazavi, Abbasali Vali and Khodayar Abdollahi (2017). Impact of Land use Change on Precipitation and Temperature Trends in an Arid Environments . Biological Forum – An International Journal 9(1): 218-229.