Comments on Large-scale afforestation significantly increases permanent surface water in China's vegetation restoration regions by Zeng, Y., Yang, X., Fang, N., & Shi, Z. (2020). Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 290, 108001

The paper Large-scale afforestation significantly increases permanent surface water in China's vegetation restoration regions, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Volume 290, 15 August 2020, 108001 by Zeng et al. (2020) finds that northern China is greening up and that vegetation cover is an important factor in controlling permanent water changes. They suggest that afforestation partially caused the increase in surface water areas due to the significant positive correlations between forest covers and surface water area. The authors suggest that, except precipitation, climatic factors were not the main factor influencing permanent water. They attribute the increase in area of surface waterbody to the increase in dams, precipitation rise, and afforestation. This commentary aims at clarifying concepts of afforestation-water yield-river flow relations and offers an alternative explanation of the observed expansion of surface water areas in northern China. Using a simple water balance-based approach, we conduct a back-of-envelope calculation and show that afforestation and 'greening up' are not likely to cause an increase in water yield and surface water storage. We argue that the detected rise of permanent surface water changes in the study regions is a result of hydraulic infrastructure construction, urbanization, and increase in precipitation, perhaps not vegetation recovery from afforestation. We believe that large-scale afforestation is not likely to increase surface water resources in northern China as implied in Zeng et al (2020). Future process-based studies are needed to understand the sources of the local precipitation and the effects of revegetation on precipitation, soil improvement, and water yield.

Automated summary

The study suggests that large-scale afforestation significantly increases permanent surface water in the vegetation restoration regions of northern China, but afforestation and greening are not likely to cause an increase in water yield and surface water storage. The rise in permanent surface water changes in the study regions is more likely a result of hydraulic infrastructure construction, urbanization, and increase in precipitation, rather than vegetation recovery from afforestation. Future studies are needed to understand the sources of local precipitation and the effects of revegetation on precipitation, soil improvement, and water yield.