Assessment of ecosystem resilience to hydroclimatic disturbances in India. (14th September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sharma, Ashutosh; Goyal, Manish Kumar
• Is Part Of: Global change biology. Volume 24:Number 2(2018)
• Page Start: e432
• Page End: e441
• Publication Date: 2017-09-14
• Subjects: climate change -- droughts -- ecosystem resilience -- evapotranspiration -- net primary productivity -- water use efficiency; Climatic changes -- Environmental aspects -- Periodicals; Troposphere -- Environmental aspects -- Periodicals; Biodiversity conservation -- Periodicals; Eutrophication -- Periodicals; 551.5
• DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13874
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1354-1013

Abstract

Abstract: Recent studies have shown an increasing trend in hydroclimatic disturbances like droughts, which are anticipated to become more frequent and intense under global warming and climate change. Droughts adversely affect the vegetation growth and crop yield, which enhances the risks to food security for a country like India with over 1.2 billion people to feed. Here, we compared the response of terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP) to hydroclimatic disturbances in India at different scales (i.e., at river basins, land covers, and climate types) to examine the ecosystems' resilience to such adverse conditions. The ecosystem water use efficiency (WUE e : NPP/Evapotranspiration) is an effective indicator of ecosystem productivity, linking carbon (C) and water cycles. We found a significant difference ( p < .05) in WUE e across India at different scales. The ecosystem resilience analysis indicated that most of the river basins were not resilient enough to hydroclimatic disturbances. Drastic reduction in WUE e under dry conditions was observed for some basins, which highlighted the cross‐biome incapability to withstand such conditions. The ecosystem resilience at land cover and climate type scale did not completely relate to the basin‐scale ecosystem resilience, which indicated that ecosystem resilience at basin scale is controlled by some other ecohydrological processes. Our results facilitate the identification of the most sensitive regions in the country for ecosystem management and climate policy making, and highlight the need for taking sufficient adaptation measures to ensure sustainability of ecosystems. Abstract : Our study reports the ecosystem resilience of different regions in India and we studied the response of net primary productivity (NPP) to hydroclimatic disturbances. We found a significant variation in ecosystem water use efficiency at different scales over India, which was related to climate and vegetation types and ecosystems in most of the river basins in India are not resilient enough to hydroclimatic disturbances. Our study will help to understand how the terrestrial ecosystems in India will respond to climate change (global change).