Climate Variability and Change—Hydrological Impacts (Proceedings of the Fifth FRIEND World
Conference held at Havana, Cuba, November 2006), IAHS Publ. 308, 2006, 325–331.
Impacts of regional land use and land cover on
rainfall: an overview
R.
A. PIELKE Sr1,2,
A. BELTRÁN-PRZEKURAT1,2,
C. A. HIEMSTRA2,
J. LIN2,
T. E. NOBIS2,
J. ADEGOKE3,
U. S. NAIR4
& D. NIYOGI5
1 University of Colorado, CIRES, Boulder, Colorado 80309 USA
pielkesr@cires.colorado.edu
2 Colorado State University, Department of Atmospheric Science, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA
3 Laboratory for Climate Analysis & Modeling (LCAM), Department of Geosciences, 420K Robert H. Flarsheim Hall, 5100 Rockhill Road, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri 64110-2499, USA
4 Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama at Huntsville, 320 Sparkman Dr., Huntsville, Alabama 35805, USA
5 Purdue University, Department of Agronomy, and Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Lilly Hall of Life Sciences, 915 W. State Street, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-2054, USA
Abstract This paper documents the
diverse role of land-use/land-cover change on precipitation. Since land
conversion continues at a rapid pace (e.g. see Table 1 in Pielke et al. 2006b), this type of human
disturbance of the climate system will continue and become even more
significant in the coming decades. The regional alteration of landscape also
has global climate effects through teleconnections as concluded in NRC (2005);
a conclusion which is bolstered by studies such as that of Chase et al. (2000) and Fedemma et al. (2005).
Key words land–atmosphere interactions;
land-use/cover change; numerical modelling; rainfall/runoff; regional climate