Climate Variability and Climate Change Impacts on Land Surface, Hydrological Processes and Water Management

water Editorial Climate Variability and Climate Change Impacts on Land Surface, Hydrological Processes and Water Management Yongqiang Zhang 1,* , Hongxia Li 2 and Paolo Reggiani 3 1 Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Related Land Surface Processes, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China 2 State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China 3 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Siegen, 57068 Siegen, Germany * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +86-10-64856515 Received: 16 July 2019; Accepted: 17 July 2019; Published: 18 July 2019 Abstract: During the last several decades, Earth´s climate has undergone significant changes due to anthropogenic global warming, and feedbacks to the water cycle. Therefore, persistent efforts are required to understand the hydrological processes and to engage in efficient water management strategies under changing environmental conditions. The twenty-four contributions in this Special Issue have broadly addressed the issues across four major research areas: (1) Climate and land-use change impacts on hydrological processes, (2) hydrological trends and causality analysis faced in hydrology, (3) hydrological model simulations and predictions, and (4) reviews on water prices and climate extremes. The substantial number of international contributions to the Special Issue indicates that climate change impacts on water resources analysis attracts global attention. Here, we give an introductory summary of the research questions addressed by the papers and point the attention of readers toward how the presented studies help gaining scientific knowledge and support policy makers. Keywords: climate variability; climate change; land use change; hydrological processes; trends; water management; model; predictions 1. Introduction It is commonly recognized that Earth´s atmosphere is subject to anthropogenic climate change due to enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations in the lower atmosphere. This development also influences hydrological processes across a range of spatial scales, reaching from the singular catchment to regional and global scales. To cope with these changes, it is necessary to implement efficient water management strategies at country, regional or global scale adaptation. To better grasp the mechanism and response to climate variability and climate change, it is crucial to stimulate multidisciplinary studies involving multiple cross-cutting disciplines such as hydrology, meteorology, remote sensing, ecology, engineering, and agriculture. To address these challenges, continuing efforts need to be undertaken to gain insights on hydrological processes, and engage in more efficient water management strategies in a changing environment across spatial and temporal scales. This Special Issue of Water contributes toward this aim through broad research work on the hydrological consequences of climate and land use change and hydrological modeling approaches. We published twenty-four peer-reviewed papers, and grouped them into four categories (Table1): Water 2019, 11, 1492; doi:10.3390/w11071492 www.mdpi.com/journal/water Water 2019, 11, 1492 2 of 8 Climate change and land use change impacts on hydrological processes; • Trends and variation of hydrological variables, such as precipitation, runoff, actual • evapotranspiration, and soil moisture; Hydrological modeling in simulating and predicting hydrological variables, such as precipitation, • evapotranspiration and soil moisture in data-sparse regions, and Reviews on water prices and climate extremes • Table 1. Summary of 24 papers published in the special issue “Climate Variability and Climate Change Impacts on Land Surface, Hydrological Processes and Water Management” in Water Journal. Categories Authors Title Research Area Research Fields Human-Induced Alterations to Land Use Land use; Climate change; Sridhar and Climate and Their Responses for Mekong River Water resources management; et al. [1] Hydrology and Water Management in the Basin Hydrology model Mekong River Basin Quantifying the Impacts of Climate Change, Coal Mining and Soil and Water Guo et al. Climate change; Coal mining; Conservation on Streamflow in a Coal Yulin [2] Soil and water conservation Mining Concentrated Watershed on the Loess Plateau, China Climate Change and Intense Irrigation Pousa Growth in Western Bahia, Brazil: The Western Bahia, Climate change; et al. [3] Urgent Need for Hydroclimatic Brazil Water security Monitoring Land Use and Climate Change Effects on Climate change; Land use; Shang Upper Heihe Climate change Surface Runoff Variations in the Upper scenario simulation; et al. [4] River Basin and land use Heihe River Basin Hydrological simulation change impacts on hydrological Effects of the Three Gorges Project on Gao and Runoff and Related Benefits of the Key processes Yangtze River Runoff changes; Flood control Zhang [5] Regions along Main Branches of the Yangtze River Analyzing the Impacts of Climate Deng et al. Variability and Land Surface Changes on Weihe River Budyko; Climate variability; [6] the Annual Water–Energy Balance in the Basin Land surface change Weihe River Basin of China Quantifying the Impact of Climate Change and Human Activities on Tian et al. Wuding River Budyko; Climate variability; Streamflow in a Semi-Arid Watershed [7] Watershed Land surface change with the Budyko Equation Incorporating Dynamic Vegetation Information Analysis of Natural Streamflow Variation Wu et al. Streamflow variation; and Its Influential Factors on the Yellow Yellow River [8] Intra-annual climate change River from 1957 to 2010 Analysis of the Recent Trends of Two Gedefaw Trend analysis; Climate Parameters over Two Ethiopia et al. [9] Precipitation; Temperature Eco-Regions of Ethiopia Selenga Hydrological Observed Trends of Climate and River Dorjsuren Sub-Basin of Precipitation; Temperature; trends and Discharge in Mongolia’s Selenga et al. [10] the Lake Baikal River discharge causality analysis Sub-Basin of the Lake Baikal Basin Basin Four Decades of Estuarine Wetland Estuarine wetlands; Zhu et al. Changes in the Yellow River Delta Based Yellow River Spatiotemporal [11] on Landsat Observations Between 1973 Delta change analysis and 2013 Water 2019, 11, 1492 3 of 8 Table 1. Cont. Categories Authors Title Research Area Research Fields Spatiotemporal Variation of Snowfall to Li et al. Precipitation Ratio and Its Implication on Snowfall to precipitation ratio; Xinjiang [12] Water Resources by a Regional Climate WRF model Model over Xinjiang, China Meteorological Factors Affecting Pan Haihe River Yan [13] Evaporation in the Haihe River Basin, Evapotranspiration Basin China Assessing the Influence of the Three Li et al. Hydrological drought; Three Gorges Dam on Hydrological Drought Yangtze River [14] Gorges Dam; GRACE Using GRACE Data The Use of Large-Scale Climate Indices in Han River Climate variability; Kim et al. Monthly Reservoir Inflow Forecasting basin in South Large-scale climate indices; [15] and Its Application on Time Series and Korea Artificial intelligence model Artificial Intelligence Models Influence of Power Operations of Cascade Hydropower Stations under Climate Wu Upper Han Climate change; human Change and Human Activities and et al. [16] River activities; Power operation Revised Optimal Operation Strategies: A Case Study in the Upper Han River, China Comparative Study of Two Paul Baitarani river State-of-the-Art Semi-Distributed Grid-based; HRU-based et al. [17] basin in India Hydrological Models A Statistical–Distributed Model of Ri et al. Runoff map; Hydrological Average Annual Runoff for Water DPR Korea [18] Hydrological model model simulations Resources Assessment in DPR Korea and predictions Multiple Linear Regression Models for Lake Soyang Diffuse pollutant discharge; Cho and Predicting Nonpoint-Source Pollutant basin of South Multiple regression model; Lee [19] Discharge from a Highland Agricultural Korea Climate change Region Integrating Field Experiments with Predictions in ungauged Pingtan Island Liu et al. Modeling to Evaluate the Freshwater basins; Rainfall-runoff in southeast [20] Availability at Ungauged Sites: A Case experiments; Distributed China Study of Pingtan Island (China) hydrological model The Effects of Litter Layer and Topsoil on Zhou et al. Surface Runoff during Simulated Rainfall Guizhou Runoff; Simulated rainfall; [21] in Guizhou Province, China: A Plot Scale province Litter layer; Topsoil Case Study Carson River in Nyaupane Evaluating Future Flood Scenarios Using the desert of Flood; Climate change; CMIP5 et al. [22] CMIP5 Climate Projections Nevada Water security; Water pricing; Soto Rios Explaining Water Pricing through a Water - Sustainable water et al. [23] Security Lens management Review Compound extremes; Climate Hao et al. Compound Extremes in - change; Multivariate [24] Hydroclimatology: A Review distribution 2. Contributed Papers 2.1. Climate Change and Land Use Change Impacts on Hydrological Processes There are eight papers published in this category. Sridhar et al. [1] evaluated human-induced alterations to land use and climate and their responses to hydrology and water management in the Mekong river basin. Authors used two hydrological models to evaluate the impacts of natural and climate-induced changes on water budget components, particularly streamflow. Model simulations show that wet season flows were increased by up to 10% and there was no significant change in dry season flows under

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