Impacts of regional land use and land cover on rainfall : an overview

Abstract

This paper documents the diverse role of land-use/land-cover change on precipitation. Since land conversion continues at a rapid pace (e.g. see Table 1 in Pielke et al. 2006b), this type of human disturbance of the climate system will continue and become even more significant in the coming decades. The regional alteration of landscape also has global climate effects through teleconnections as concluded in NRC (2005); a conclusion which is bolstered by studies such as that of Chase et al. (2000) and Fedemma et al. (2005).