Climate Change Effects on Hydrological Processes, Water Resources, Ecosystems and Agriculture

Dear Colleagues,

Climate on Earth is constantly changing. However, this round of global change towards warming is highly related to excessive emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gasses (GHGs) beyond the range of historical natural climate variability. The projections made by the IPCC of about 1.1 to 6.4 Degree-Celsius increase in the mean global temperature during the 21st century, and the reality of increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events in recent decades, have led to world-wide awareness and concerns. Most nations are calling for and committed to immediate actions against inaction.

Water is crucial to life. This global warming trend has profound effects on all ecosystems but the most significant effects are found in the high altitude and latitude areas where most of the world’s fresh water is stored as snow and ice and would be released prematurely to the lowlands and oceans. In this Special Issue of WATER, we seek research contributions focused on climate change effects on hydrological processes, water resources, ecosystems and agriculture. Specifically, we aim to cover a wide range of recent climate change studies on the storage, movement and variability of water resources in the high mountain ranges (or water towers) of the world, such as Andes, Atlas, Alps, Caucasus, Himalayan, Urals, Rockies, Appalachians, and the Great Dividing Mountains, etc. Studies focused on the resulting alterations to the eco and agricultural systems in the downstream areas of the watersheds are equally welcome. Analyses should be based on realistic data observed at the fine local and regional scales in the human occupied areas rather than at the global scale and in the polar areas which have been largely covered by IPCC. Research methods can be either based on down-scaling of the general circulation models (GCMs), or applying the watershed models to local landscape and climate conditions.

Prof. Dr. Zhi (Luke) Wang
Guest Editor

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