Effects of Climate Change and LUCC on Terrestrial Biomass in the Lower Heihe River Basin during 2001–2010

Ecosystem services are tightly coupled with availability of solar energy and its partition into energy fluxes, and biomass accumulation, which represents the energy flux in ecosystems, is a key aspect of ecosystem services. This study analyzed the effects of climate change and land use and land cover change (LUCC) on the biomass accumulation change in the Lower Heihe River Basin during 2001–2010. Biomass accumulation was represented with net primary productivity (NPP), which was estimated with the C-Fix model, and scenario analysis was carried out to investigate effects of climate change and LUCC on biomass accumulation change in a spatially explicit way. Results suggested climate change had an overall positive effect on biomass accumulation, mainly owning to changes in CO2 concentration and temperature. LUCC accounted for 70.61% of biomass accumulation change, but primarily owning to fractional vegetation change (FVCC) rather than land conversion, and there is a negative interactive effect of FVCC and climate change on biomass accumulation, indicating FVCC resulting from water diversion played a dominant in influencing biomass accumulation. These results can provide valuable decision support information for the local ecosystem managers and decision makers to guarantee sustainable provision of essential ecosystem services.