Impact of enhanced forest conditions on land surface characteristics over central India using LIS

Changes in the nature of vegetation imply changes in land surface parameters such as surface albedo, roughness length, root depth, and surface emissivity which results in alteration of land surface conditions. This study aims to understand the effect of enhanced forest conditions on land surface states and land surface fluxes over central India during different seasons. In this study, the following simulations were carried out using Noah3.6 Land Surface Model (LSM) in Land Information System (LIS) for 5 years from May 2013 to May 2018 over the Indian region: (i) Control (Ctl) run, that represents the cropland(normal) scenario with Modis IGBP land cover map, (ii) Experimental (Exp) run, that represents enhanced forest conditions, where the cropland cover was replaced by evergreen broadleaf forest over the targeted region (central India). The results of this study indicate that when the model outputs were averaged over the targeted region, enhanced forest conditions led to increased soil moisture content as compared to the Cropland scenario due to dense cover of the surface and higher water holding capacity of the soil. Due to the canopy interception of solar radiation and increased soil moisture availability in the Exp-run, a decrease in both soil temperature and daily soil temperature range was seen as compared to Ctl-run. Net surface radiation increased during all the seasons in Exp-run as compared to Ctl-run due to a decrease of surface albedo. On conversion from cropland to the evergreen broadleaf forest, an increase in the latent heat flux was observed during all the seasons due to an increase in soil moisture and an increase in surface roughness length. A reduction in the sensible heat flux was observed during the post-monsoon season and beginning of winter season, however, for other seasons, an increase in the sensible heat flux was seen. The above behavior of sensible heat flux is due to variation of precipitation and the varying absorbed surface energy during different seasons. Furthermore, the results suggest that the effect of this enhanced forest conditions on land surface characteristics is more pronounced during the drier periods. A similar behavior of land surface characteristics due to enhanced forest conditions is observed for all the seasons during different years from 2013 to 2018.