Attribution of the land surface temperature response to land-use conversions from bare land

Since the early 1980s, large-scale revegetation has been implemented in Northwest China and has been found to be useful in desertification prevention. However, it remains unclear, how land cover changes affect local meteorological conditions, such as land surface temperature. In this study, the land surface temperature response to land-use changes was comparatively evaluated using micrometeorological observations from a cropland site, a mixed forest site, a shrubland site, and adjacent bare land sites in the Heihe River Basin, Northwest China. The surface temperature changes (Delta T-s) are decomposed into contributions from changes in radiative forcing, heat resistance, evapotranspiration, soil heat flux and air temperature based on the intrinsic biophysical mechanism (IBM) and the two-resistance mechanism (TRM). The results indicate that 1) the IBM attribution method is more applicable than the TRM method in these arid ecosystems; 2) the influence of different types of vegetation cover on the surface temperature exhibits temporal variance on the diurnal and seasonal time scales; 3) the dominant biophysical components in the daytime of the growing season are evaporative cooling in the cropland paired sites and heat resistance change in the mixed forest paired sites, but these two components are both at a moderate level in the shrubland paired sites. This study provides a useful reference for local climate impact assessments when implementing environmental protection projects in similarly arid areas.