12.22.2016
Potential and Actual impacts of deforestation and afforestation on land surface temperature
Abstract
Forests are undergoing significant changes throughout the globe. These changes can modify water, energy, and carbon balance of the land surface, which can ultimately affect climate. We utilize satellite data to quantify the potential and actual impacts of forest change on land surface temperature (LST) from 2003 to 2013. The potential effect of forest change on temperature is calculated by the LST difference between forest and nearby nonforest land, whereas the actual impact on temperature is quantified by the LST trend difference between deforested (afforested) and nearby unchanged forest (nonforest land) over several years. The good agreement found between potential and actual impacts both at annual and seasonal levels indicates that forest change can have detectable impacts on surface temperature trends. That impact, however, is different for maximum and minimum temperatures. Overall, deforestation caused a significant warming up to 0.28 K/decade on average temperature trends in tropical regions, a cooling up to −0.55 K/decade in boreal regions, a weak impact in the northern temperate regions, and strong warming (up to 0.32 K/decade) in the southern temperate regions. Afforestation induced an opposite impact on temperature trends. The magnitude of the estimated temperature impacts depends on both the threshold and the data set (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer and Landsat) by which forest cover change is defined. Such a latitudinal pattern in temperature impact is mainly caused by the competing effects of albedo and evapotranspiration on temperature. The methodology developed here can be used to evaluate the temperature change induced by forest cover change around the globe.1 Introduction
Forest change, defined here as either an increase or decrease in forest land cover, has proven to be a key driver of anthropogenic climate change in the past century [Betts, 2001; Bounoua et al., 2002; Bonan, 2008; Allen et al., 2015]. Forest change has, and will continue to, affect climate through associated biophysical changes that modify the water cycle and surface energy balance [Eltahir and Bras, 1996; Bonan, 2008] and also through alterations to the carbon balance [Jackson et al., 2008; Montenegro et al., 2009; Bathiany et al., 2010; Zhao and Jackson, 2014]. In recent decades, forests have experienced significant changes globally [Food and Agriculture Organization, 2010; Hansen et al., 2013; W. Li et al., 2016] due to the combined effects of natural factors (e.g., fire and drought [Allen et al., 2015]) and human activities like agriculture [Kim et al., 2015] and forestry [Rudel, 2012]. Human activities play an increasingly larger role in global forest dynamics with marked regional characteristics [Hansen et al., 2013; W. Li et al., 2016]. For example, the total forest area in China has rapidly increased since the 1990s [Zhang and Song, 2006] due to a national afforestation policy [Viña et al., 2016]. In contrast, drastic forest loss continues in tropical countries like Indonesia [Margono et al., 2014; Richards and Friess, 2015]. It is apparent that these forest changes can directly affect local temperatures [Peng et al., 2014; Li et al., 2015]. However, it is less clear as to what extent such changes can affect the long-term temperature change (i.e., the trend). Climate models and in situ measurements are often used to estimate the climatic impact of forest change [Bonan, 2008]. These two approaches present major limitations in addressing this particular problem. First, in most cases deforestation occurs in small patches that are difficult to capture by coarse-resolution climate models or in areas where long-term, reliable meteorological data are lacking [Lee et al., 2011; Lawrence and Vandecar, 2014]. Second, climate models are subject to large uncertainties in physical processes, parameterization, and input data [Oleson et al., 2004; Pitman et al., 2009], while in situ measurements are relatively sparse at large scales and thus suffer from insufficient spatial sampling. For instance, areas where forest cover change is prevalent, like South America and Africa [Hansen et al., 2013; W. Li et al., 2016], are underrepresented in the Global Historical Climate Network [Montandon et al., 2011]. Remote sensing can overcome these limitations in local scale and spatial sampling by providing data with high spatiotemporal resolution at the global scale. Previous studies have shown that land surface temperature (LST) is able to characterize the effect of forest on temperature and can be used to indicate the local climate impact [Nemani et al., 1996; Loarie et al., 2011; Mildrexler et al., 2011; Wickham et al., 2012; Li et al., 2015]. In a global analysis of the biophysical effects of forest on local climate, Li et al. [2015] showed the latitudinal variation and distinct seasonal warming and cooling effects of the Earth’s major forest types on daytime, nighttime, and daily average LST. The temperature effects shown in Li et al. [2015] are the potential impacts of forest change (a priori impact) estimated in places where forest changes have not occurred yet. Given the fact that forest cover changes have taken place around the globe in the last decade, it is beneficial to ask (1) whether recent forest cover changes have an observable impact (a posteriori impact) on local climate that can help to mitigate or, contrarily, accelerate the climate warming due to increasing greenhouse gases on a regional basis and (2) if this actual impact of forest changes on temperature can be predicted in advance by using knowledge from the potential effect? Answering these questions can advance our knowledge of the local effects of actual deforestation that have important ecological impacts. The large change in temperature caused by deforestation can result in the loss of microclimate conditions associated with forests and could have severe consequences for biological organisms [D’Odorico et al., 2013]. Although there is significant evidence for the temperature difference between forests and nearby cleared areas in the literature [see, e.g., Runyan and D’Odorico, 2016, and references therein], a global-scale assessment of actual impacts of forest cover change is still lacking. A recent work by Alkama and Cescatti [2016] made a valuable contribution to the first question by using high-resolution Landsat forest change data to assess the impact of recent forest cover change on both LST and air temperature at global scale. However, the temperature impacts are derived using pairs of years, which are subject to the influence of interannual climate variability. One remaining question is whether forest cover change can significantly influence longer-term temperature trends in the last decade. To address the aforementioned questions, the objectives of this paper are to (1) quantify the impact of forest change on temperature trends from 2003 to 2013 globally and (2) compare these actual observed impacts of forest change to their corresponding potential impacts, developed by Li et al. [2015], to determine whether the latter could be used as an evaluation tool. This is the first study—independent and different from the work of Alkama and Cescatti [2016]—to provide a comprehensive, observation-driven, global assessment of the forest change impact on temperature trends using remote sensing data from satellite.2 Methods and Data
We utilize three satellite data sets to quantify the impact of forest change on temperature trends globally—two for detecting forest cover change and one for estimating temperature trends. These data sets provide systematic and continuous spatial information needed to develop repeatable, quantitative, long-term measures of the impacts of forest cover change on temperature.2.1 Data Sets for Forest Cover Change
Accurately detecting deforestation, afforestation, and undisturbed forests is an important prerequisite to the assessment of forest change impacts on temperature. Here we use forest cover change detected from two independent data sets: Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land cover (LC) data [Friedl et al., 2010] and Global Forest Change (GFC) data [Hansen et al., 2013]. Using two data sets generated from different sources can reduce the uncertainty in detecting forest cover change. The results based on each of these two data sets are reported separately for the purpose of cross-validation. MODIS LC data set (MCD12C1 version 5.1) provides land cover information annually from 2002 to 2012 at a spatial resolution of 0.05°. The data set consists of 17 land cover classes defined by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme classification scheme. Among them, five forest classes—including evergreen needleleaf, evergreen broadleaf, deciduous needleleaf, deciduous broadleaf, and mixed forests—are considered as “forest” in the following analysis, whereas the other land classes are considered as “nonforest.” Since the GFC data set is produced from Landsat imagery, it provides information on forest cover change that is independent from MODIS LC and at a much higher spatial resolution. The data set contains a baseline tree cover percentage in 2000 and a nominal class for forest gain or loss throughout the period of 2000 to 2012. Because original GFC data are at 30 m spatial resolution, we aggregate the data to 0.05° to match the MODIS resolution. In the reprocessed GFC data, tree cover, forest gain, and forest loss are all expressed as a percentage at 0.05° resolution. A forest threshold is needed to define forest and nonforest in GFC. We choose 50% tree cover percentage as the threshold, which means a pixel with tree percentage larger (smaller) than 50% is defined as forest (nonforest).2.2 Extracting Forest Cover Change
Forest cover change in this study refers to either an increase or decrease in forest cover seen by satellite data, which can be interpreted as deforestation (forest loss), afforestation (forest gain), or reforestation without specifying the cause of the change. When describing forest cover change, we use deforestation/afforestation for MODIS LC. We use forest loss/gain specifically for GFC due to the inherent difference of these two data sets. To describe forest change common to both data sets and in a general context, we use deforestation/afforestation, consistent with their usage in the literature. The climate impacts of deforestation/afforestation and forest loss/gain are essentially the same in the context of this paper. In principle, forest cover change can be identified from either a conversion between well-defined forest and nonforest class in MODIS LC or tree cover changes in GFC. However, in practice, this is complicated by noise and uncertainty in the data that often bring in false change signals, and thus additional filtering procedures are required. The specific filtering procedures are not identical for the MODIS LC and GFC data due to their different data structures. These procedures are explained below.2.2.1 Forest Cover Change in MODIS LC
It is known that MODIS LC data contain interannual variations that are unrelated to actual land cover changes [Friedl et al., 2010] and could reduce the credibility of derived forest cover change for adjacent years. This issue is alleviated through the following two procedures. First, forest change is not directly extracted from two individual years. Instead, we deduce forest cover change by comparing two stable land cover maps created for the period of 2002–2006 and 2008–2012 by the most frequent land cover type recorded at each pixel during each 5 year period. The resulting stable land maps largely eliminate those unrealistic changes in land cover types between years and thus improve the reliability of the identified forest changes. Next, forest changes identified in the first step are further filtered by tree cover change of GFC data. The rationale behind this filtering process is that the unrealistic forest change in MODIS LC, if any, would be inconsistent with the tree cover change in GFC, because the latter are produced at a much higher resolution and are presumably more accurate. For example, if MODIS LC data show deforestation but GFC data show increased tree cover, this “deforested” pixel is probably an unrealistic change and is hence discarded. The effective deforested (afforested) pixels in MODIS LC must be accompanied with a minimal net tree cover decrease (increase) of 5% in GFC (this 5% minimal threshold will be explained in the next paragraph). In addition, the effective unchanged forest and nonforest pixels in MODIS LC must come with tree cover change <5% to remove any forest cover changes undetected with MODIS LC. The resulting forest cover changes with their land conversion types are shown in Figure S1 in the supporting information.2.2.2 Forest Cover Change in GFC
Ideally, forest cover change in GFC from 2000 to 2012 can be directly extracted from tree cover change. However, we found that 63.57% of nonice land pixels in GFC experienced some degree of nonzero tree cover change, which is 2 times greater than the total forest pixels (20.73%) defined by MODIS LC. Apparently, most of these instances are noise rather than real forest change, as can be seen from their very small values (Figure S2a). Including all these pixels would push the total forest change unrealistically high. To mitigate this effect, we choose a minimal 5% threshold to separate real forest cover change signal and noise. This threshold can greatly reduce the total forest cover change pixels to less than 8% (Figure S2a), a rate comparable to the 10.6% raw forest cover change pixels derived from the MODIS LC stable land maps over the two periods 2002–2006 and 2008–2012. A more stringent threshold (>5%) would have limited effects in further reducing forest change pixels (Figure S2a). This threshold (5%) is also used to define unchanged forest and nonforest in both GFC and MODIS LC. Previous studies [Wickham et al., 2013; Li et al., 2015; Alkama and Cescatti, 2016] found that the choice of threshold values used in detecting forest cover change will affect the magnitude of the forest change impacts on temperature. To minimize the threshold influence in the determined forest change when comparing the results between MODIS LC and GFC, we extract forest change pixels in GFC data that have similar average tree cover change to those in MODIS LC. We choose the tree cover change thresholds of −0.15 and 0.10 because they can produce forest loss and gain pixels in GFC data with average tree cover change (−0.34 and 0.19 for forest loss and gain, respectively; Figure S2b) very close to those deforestation and afforestation pixels in MODIS LC (−0.31 and 0.17 for deforestation and afforestation, respectively). Moreover, additional sensitivity analysis is performed on GFC data to examine how forest cover change impacts on temperature vary with different thresholds to determine forest loss and forest gain pixels.2.3 Temperature Data and Processing
The LST data are from MODIS 8 day Aqua LST (MYD11C2) from July 2002 to December 2013 at 0.05° spatial resolution. The overpass time of Aqua (around 13:30 and 01:30 local solar time at the equator) approximates to the time of daily maximum (Tmax) and minimum (Tmin) temperature. The 8 day maximum and minimum temperature data are further aggregated to seasonal and annual values for each year. The arithmetic mean of those values is used to represent daily average temperature (Tave). It should be noted that MODIS 8 day LST data are the average only for the clear-sky condition, because clouds inhibit satellite observations in the thermal infrared spectral ranges [Wan, 2008]. The LST data have been processed in the same way as described in Li et al. [2015]; only high-quality data are selected based on the quality control flag system that comes with the product. Climate Research Unit (CRU) monthly air temperature data are used to compare temperature trends with those that are derived from LST. CRU data are at 0.5° and from 2003 to 2013, including both maximum and minimum air temperatures. Temperature trends are estimated by linear regression at annual and seasonal scales over the period of 2003 to 2013. Time (year) is the independent variable, temperature is the dependent variable, and the trend is given by the slope. The linear regression method is more robust than using two pairs of years because it extracts information from a full time series of temperature data (between 6 and 11 data points in this study). MODIS LST data in 2002 are not used since the data collection starts in July and there is not a full year’s worth of data. In a similar practice, pixels with less than 6 years of valid data are discarded in the trend estimation. Trends for CRU air temperature are estimated over the same period. We find that temperature trends for MODIS LST (aggregated to 0.5°) and CRU air temperature exhibit similar spatial patterns (r = 0.47 and 0.52 for Tmax and Tmin, respectively), but trends in LST are larger than that in air temperature as indicated by their regression slope in Figure S3. In addition, LST contains more spatial details that are not captured by the air temperature, because of the much higher spatial resolution of LST compared to the air temperature gridded from a relatively sparse distribution of weather stations.2.4 The Potential and Actual Impacts of Forest Cover Change
The impact of forest cover change on temperature trends is assessed through its potential and actual impacts. The terms “Potential impact” and “Actual impact” throughout the paper are used to differentiate the impacts estimated from hypothetical forest change and from actual forest change that has already occurred in reality.2.4.1 The Potential Impact
The potential impact of forest cover change on LST is quantified by multiyear averaged LST difference (ΔLST) between unchanged forest and nearby nonforest (excluding water, ice, and urban), as quantified in equation (1):
2.4.2 The Actual Impact
When forest cover actually changes, it affects temperature regulation, which contributes to temperature trends. The impact on the observed temperature trend caused by this change is defined in this study as “actual” effect. It can be quantified by the difference in LST trends (ΔTrend) of deforested pixels minus nearby unchanged forest for deforestation impact (equation (2)) and afforested pixels minus nearby unchanged nonforest for afforestation impact (equation (3)):

3 Results
3.1 Potential Impact of Forest Change on LST
The multiyear averaged LST difference of forest minus nearby nonforest (ΔLST) indicates the potential impact of forest change on temperature. Figure 1 shows the ΔLST estimated from MODIS LC and GFC data. The spatial pattern of ΔLST, which shows the local cooling and warming effects of forest, is consistent between MODIS LC and GFC. These results are also consistent with the results reported in Li et al. [2015], which compares forest with open land, although GFC has more comparison samples and better coverage. The broad agreement is also confirmed by the high correlation found in ΔLST derived from MODIS LC and GFC (Figure S6). Overall, most forests have a cooling effect on Tmax (negative ΔLST) in tropical and temperate regions—with the strongest cooling effect in tropical forests (20°S–20°N) and moderate cooling in temperate forests (20°N–50°N and 20°S–50°S)—and warming effect (positive ΔLST) in boreal regions (50°N–90°N). In contrast, most forests have a warming effect on Tmin, especially in midlatitude, while tropical forests show a slight cooling effect. Considering this, the potential effect is that deforestation increases Tmax in low- and mid-latitude regions, decreases Tmax at high-latitude regions, decreases Tmin in extratropical regions, and marginally increases Tmin in tropical regions. The impact on Tave largely follows the impact on Tmax due to its greater magnitude and dominant contribution. Afforestation would have the opposite warming/cooling effect on the three temperature variables.3.2 Actual Impact of Deforestation on LST
In this section, we investigate whether the estimated potential impacts can be realized in actual temperature change where forest change took place. The actual impact of deforestation on LST (ΔTrend) during 2003–2013 derived from MODIS LC and GFC can be seen in Figure 3, with potential impact in red and actual impact in blue. The potential impact here, given by ΔLST, has the opposite sign to Figure 1, so that nonforest minus forest indicates deforestation. The actual impact of deforestation significantly departs from the zero line, illustrating a detectable impact of deforestation on temperature trends. For each temperature variable, the actual impact of deforestation in most regions is very similar to the potential impact in terms of sign (i.e., positive or negative) and latitudinal pattern. However, less agreement for Tmax is observed in northern high-latitude regions for GFC data. This could reflect the influences of longitudinal variations at high latitude as well as the local variability associated with each comparison sample because they may not necessarily be collected from the same locations as MODIS LC (Figure S4). Nevertheless, it clearly demonstrates that the actual impact of deforestation on LST trends is consistent with the potential impact derived from ΔLST, regardless of the forest change data set used. In terms of magnitude, the actual impact and potential impact are not directly comparable. The latter assumes a complete and immediate conversion between forest and nonforest, but in reality deforestation process is often nonuniform in space and time (e.g., partial and scattered deforestation and forest removed at a variable pace over many years). Assuming that deforestation occurred uniformly in space and time, one might be able to make the actual and potential impacts roughly comparable in magnitude by dividing the potential impact by the length of time during which deforestation has taken place (e.g., 11 years in our study). However, discrepancy is expected in such comparison because the complex situation in the real world often violates the uniform assumption and causes the actual impact to deviate from the potential effect.3.3 Actual Impact of Afforestation on LST
Afforestation is a reverse process to deforestation and thus should have the opposite impact on LST. In most cases, we do see impacts from afforestation on Tmax and Tmin trends that are opposite in sign compared to deforestation impacts, supported by both MODIS LC and GFC data (Figure 5). That is, afforestation in tropical region cools down Tave trends due to Tmax but warms up all three LST trends significantly in high latitudes. Seasonal impact of afforestation is generally contrary to that of deforestation, which further adds to the credibility of the forest change impact on temperature trends (Figure 6).3.4 Robustness of Forest Change Impacts on LST
Collectively, evidence for deforestation and afforestation impacts is summarized in Tables 1 and 2 for MODIS LC and GFC data, respectively, with different consistency labels. These consistency labels are chosen to assess the robustness of the results from different perspectives, including (1) statistical significance of the actual impact (S), (2) whether the impact is consistent in sign with the potential impact (ΔLST; L), (3) whether the impact is opposite in sign between deforestation and afforestation (F), (4) whether impact is consistent in sign between MODIS LC and GFC data (D), and (5) whether the difference in the magnitude of the estimated impacts between MODIS LC and GFC is greater than their averages by 100% (asterisk indicates within the range). Hence, more labels for each entry in Tables 1 and 2 suggest higher confidence for the corresponding temperature impact. Most forest change impacts show high confidence in terms of significance and sign except for southern high-latitude regions, where the number of comparison sample is very limited. In terms of magnitude, the deforestation impact on Tmax in the boreal regions shows weaker agreement due to larger differences in magnitude and inconsistent sign between MODIS LC and GFC data, whereas the afforestation impact shows better consistency.Table 1. Impact of Forest Change on Annual LST Based on MODIS LC at Different Latitudinal Zones With Consistency Labels (K/Decade)a

Table 2. Impact of Forest Change on Annual LST Based on GFC at Different Latitudinal Zones With Consistency Labels (K/Decade)a
