The effect of deforestation on the regional temperature in Northeastern China

Land cover change, as one of the most important driving forces to climate change, has become the research focus of the global environmental change research and global land project. More researchers studied on the global influence of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change and proved that land use change occurred at different temperature zones may produce different climate effects. For example, deforestation in tropical areas would lead to higher temperatures as the decreasing of evapotranspiration caused by the reduction of roughness and the decreasing of drag coefficient and leaf area index while, in boreal areas, similar deforestation would cause lower temperature as the increasing of albedo particularly during winter with the snow cover. However, the impact of deforestation in the temperate regions on the climate still existed uncertainty and the impacts of deforestation at different humidity conditions on climate has not explored yet. From this perspective, this article used Weather Research and Forecasting model to simulate the impact of deforestation on the temperature of Northeastern China. In this study, we designed two scenarios in July and December, respectively: One was simulated without human intervention, and the second one was simulated with the current forest covers. The results showed that the temperature in both summer and winter showed a decreasing trend when the conversion of forest to farmland occurred in northeastern China. In order to further explore the humidity impacts on the temperature, we performed sample analysis on humid, sub-humid, and semi-arid regions. According to the results, the maximum variation of temperature was found in humid areas, especially in December when the temperature decreased around 4–5 °C, while the change in semi-arid and sub-humid areas is relatively small.