Effects of Human Activities on Evapotranspiration and Its Components in Arid Areas

Abstract

With the increasing impact of human activities on the environment, evapotranspiration (ET) has changed in arid areas, which further affects the water resources availability in the region. Therefore, understanding the impact of human activities on ET and its components is helpful to the management of water resources in arid areas. This study verified the accuracy of Fisher’s model (PT-JPL model) for ET estimation in southern Xinjiang, China by using the evaporation complementarity theory dataset (AET dataset). The ET and the evapotranspiration components (T:E) of six land-use types were estimated in southern Xinjiang from 1982 to 2015, and the impact of human activities on ET was analyzed. In addition, the impact of four environmental factors (temperature (Temp), net radiation (Rn), relative humidity (RH), and NDVI) on ET were evaluated. The results showed that the calculated ET values of the PT-JPL model were close to the ET values of the AET dataset. The correlation coefficient (R2) was more than 0.8, and the NSE was close to 1. In grassland, water area, urban industrial and mining land, forest land, and cultivated land, the ET values were high, and in unused land types, the ET values were the lowest. The T:E values varied greatly in urban industrial and mining land, forest land, and cultivated land, which was due to the intensification of human activities, and the values were close to 1 in summer in recent years. Among the four environmental factors, temperature largely influenced the monthly ET. These findings suggest that human activities have significantly reduced soil evaporation and improved water use efficiency. The impact of human activities on environmental factors has caused changes in ET and its components, and appropriate oasis expansion is more conducive to regional sustainable development.