Progress in the Study of the Effects of Land Use and Land Cover Change on the Climate System

Land Use and Land Cover Change (LUCC or LULCC) has a significant influence on the environment on which mankind’s survival depends, and it is closely related to human being’s social－economical activities. The role of humans within the climate system involves much more than global warming due to greenhouse gases. By changing the natural land surface directly and other biogeophysical or biogeochemical processes indirectly, LUCC represents a firstorder human climate forcing. This manuscript reviews the history of the study of LUCC and its correlation to climate system briefly. Forcing due to LUCC has significant spatial heterogeneity, leading to spatial variability in the associated climate response. Summarizing recent peer-reviewed papers, the authors conclude that the impact of LUCC such as deforestation, urbanization, damming, etc on regional climate is robust while it does not have strong effects at global level, because the variability of LUCC has regional magnitudes much greater than its global average. The net biogeophysical impact of LUCC results from the competition between the effects of variation of albedo, evapotranspiration efficiency, and surface roughness. LUCC leads to warming in tropical and subtropical regions and cooling in temperate and boreal zones. Current global warming owing to LUCC is predominantly driven by changes in surface hydrology through reduced evapotranspiration and latent heat flux, with the radiative forcing playing a secondary role. Finally existing issues in current study of the influence of LUCC on climate system are pointed out. The authors recommend that three climate metric should be assessed as a start and interdisciplinary cooperation is essential in future research.