Replacement of Dry Forest by Crops in a semiarid region of Argentine: its effects in the energy budget

HOUSPANOSSIAN JAVIER; NOSETTO, MARCELO; JOBBÁGY ESTEBAN

Taller; Impacto de cambios en el uso de la tierra sobre el clima y la hidrología de la Cuenca del Plata; 2010

Inter American Insitute for Global Change

Dry forests (DF) of Argentina, extending over 900000km2, and have been increasingly replaced during the last 10 years for crop and forage production. This land cover change may strongly affect the surface energy budget and the hydrologic cycle, with potential effects on the local, regional and global climate. In this study, we estimated the surface and tropopause radiative forcing associated with the albedo change and temperature change of this land cover transformation. Additionally, we characterized the Albedo, surface temperature Ts (K) and NDVI patterns as surrogates of latent heat and carbon fluxes, respectively.