Li et al. (2026) Modeling Land Use Dynamics under Climate and Hydrological Changes: An Integrated Hydro–Land Framework

Identification

• Journal: Journal of Environmental Management
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-03-04
• Authors: Guanghui Li, Jianhua He, Yanfang Liu, Haoran Zhang, Yaolin Liu
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2026.129203

Research Groups

• School of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430079, China
• Key Laboratory of Geographic Information System, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430079, China
• College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

Short Summary

This paper introduces LaHyFr, a cascaded land-hydrology coupled modeling framework, to simulate bidirectional soil-water interactions and land-use dynamics under climate change, demonstrating significantly improved simulation accuracy in the Hanjiang River Basin.

Objective

• To develop an integrated hydro-land framework (LaHyFr) that captures the nonlinear, bidirectional feedbacks between hydrological processes and land-use dynamics under changing climates, addressing limitations of traditional one-way models.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Hanjiang River Basin
• Temporal Scale: Monthly (for land-cover updates and dynamic parameter adjustments); Scenario experiments under SSP–RCP framework imply future projections.

Methodology and Data

• Models used:
  • Hydrological module: SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool)
  • Land-use module: CLUE-S (Conversion of Land Use and its Effects at Small regional extent)
  • Spatiotemporal downscaling algorithm
• Data sources:
  • Climate change scenarios (SSP–RCP framework)
  • Hydrological variables (e.g., soil moisture)
  • Land-cover updates
  • Vegetation phenology
  • Climate stress indices

Main Results

• The LaHyFr framework improved the coefficient of determination for hydrological simulations by 13.33% during calibration and 18.05% during validation.
• Water-balance error was reduced by 1.4% during calibration and 2.6% during validation.
• For land-cover simulations, the Area Under the Curve (AUC) increased by 11.31% and Kappa increased by 12.32%.
• The model successfully captured nonlinear soil-water responses across different climate regimes under SSP–RCP scenarios.

Contributions

• Development of LaHyFr, a novel cascaded land-hydrology coupled modeling framework that explicitly resolves bidirectional soil-water interactions and land-use dynamics.
• Addresses the limitations of traditional one-way models by incorporating critical soil-water feedbacks and dynamic parameter adjustments.
• Provides a transferable tool for analyzing coupled climate–hydrology–land dynamics, supporting watershed management and climate adaptation planning.
• Demonstrates improved accuracy in both hydrological and land-cover simulations compared to uncoupled approaches.

Funding

• Not explicitly mentioned in the provided paper text.

Citation

@article{Li2026Modeling,
  author = {Li, Guanghui and He, Jianhua and Liu, Yanfang and Zhang, Haoran and Liu, Yaolin},
  title = {Modeling Land Use Dynamics under Climate and Hydrological Changes: An Integrated Hydro–Land Framework},
  journal = {Journal of Environmental Management},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1016/j.jenvman.2026.129203},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2026.129203}
}