Guodong Cheng

• Chinese Academy of Sciences

Permafrost degradation varies spatially; however, the underlying mechanism remains partially unclear. In this study, we predicted permafrost variation under the influence of climate change to investigate the sensitivity of permafrost degradation to geological and climatic conditions. The results revealed that geological strata can strongly impact t...

Rivers originating from the Tibetan Plateau (TP) provide water to more than 1 billion people living downstream. Almost 40% of the TP is currently underlain by permafrost, which serves as both an ice reserve and a flow barrier and is expected to degrade drastically in a warming climate. The hydrological impacts of permafrost thaw across the TP, howe...

Global warming has caused widespread permafrost degradation, but the geographic regularity of permafrost degradation is unknown. Here, we investigated the three-dimensional features of future permafrost degradation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Our findings show that permafrost degradation under shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP) has obvious thr...

Downward solar radiation (DSR) and air temperature (Ta) have significant influences on the thermal state of frozen ground. These parameters are also important forcing terms for physically based land surface models (LSMs). However, the quantitative influences of inaccuracies in DSR and Ta products on simulated frozen ground temperatures remain uncle...

Watersheds are the basic unit of Earth's terrestrial systems and are therefore ideal units for the study of critical zones (CZs). However, grand challenges remain regarding the observation, modeling, and management of CZs and watershed systems. We synthesize the progress and breakthroughs associated with watershed science and CZ research in the Hei...

The damage to infrastructure caused by near-surface permafrost degradation is directly related to the well-being of 10 million people and the sustainable development on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Third Pole of the Earth. Here we identify the economic damage caused by permafrost degradation to infrastructure on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau by integ...

The thermal state of frozen ground and its changes are important for understanding environmental change and supporting related applications to the Earth’s Third Pole, which is a hotspot area for science research. However, challenges remain in data and modelling, meaning that much information is unavailable, especially for the entire Third Pole regi...

Global warming has led to permafrost degradation worldwide. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) hosts most of the world's alpine permafrost, yet its impending changes remain largely unclear, thereby affecting regional hydrological and ecological processes and the global carbon budget. By employing a land surface model adapted to simulate frozen ground,...

The active layer thickness (ALT) in permafrost regions regulates hydrological cycles, water sustainability, and ecosystem functions in the cryosphere and is extremely sensitive to climate change. Previous studies often focused on the impacts of rising temperature on the ALT, while the roles of soil water content and soil granularity have rarely bee...

Monitoring the thermal state of permafrost (TSP) is important in many environmental science and engineering applications. However, such data are generally unavailable, mainly due to the lack of ground observations and the uncertainty of traditional physical models. This study produces novel permafrost datasets for the Northern Hemisphere (NH), incl...

This biophysical permafrost zonation map was produced using a rule-based GIS model that integrated a new permafrost extent, climate conditions, vegetation structure, soil and topographic conditions, as well as a yedoma map. Different from the previous maps, permafrost in this map is classified into five types: climate-driven, climate-driven/ecosyst...

The stability of permafrost is of fundamental importance to socio-economic well-being and ecological services, involving broad impacts to hydrological cycling, global budgets of greenhouse gases and infrastructure safety. This study presents a biophysical permafrost zonation map that uses a rule-based GIS model integrating global climate and ecolog...

Permafrost has great influences on the climatic, hydrological, and ecological systems on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). The changing permafrost and its impact have been attracting great attention worldwide like never before. More observational and modeling approaches are needed to promote an understanding of permafrost thermal state and climatic...

Enabling public sharing of scientific data in China not only needs top-down mandates but also incentive mechanisms that boost confidence and willingness to engage in data-sharing practices among Chinese researchers.

Permafrost, as one of the cryospheric indicators, is extremely sensitive to climatic changes. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has experienced remarkable warming and wetting since the mid-1990s. Its recent wetting alters thermal and hydrological properties in permafrost regions and inevitably affects permafrost thermal dynamics. While previous studies mos...

Watershed system models are important tools for understanding complex watershed systems and integrated river basin management. However, there are very few models that can represent the coevolution of water, ecology and socioeconomic system at the river basin scale. In this study, a watershed system model was developed using the case of the Heihe Ri...

Monitoring of the thermal state of permafrost is important in environmental science and engineering applications. However, such data are generally unavailable mainly due to the lack of ground observations and the uncertainty of traditional physical models. This study produces novel permafrost datasets for the Northern Hemisphere (NH), including pre...

连续性分类系统的适用性与数据匮乏是过去青藏高原多年冻土制图的两个主要问题. 文章基于高海拔多年冻土稳定性分类体系, 在模型对比基础上, 利用支持向量回归模型集合模拟了划分多年冻土稳定性的年平均地温, 生产了空间分辨率为1km的青藏高原多年冻土稳定性分布图. 制图中使用了青藏高原2005~2015年间共237个钻孔年平均地温(年变化深度处温度)观测数据, 利用统计学习方法融合了地面观测与遥感冻结指数、融化指数、积雪日数、叶面积指数、土壤容重、高程和高质量的土壤水分再分析资料. 该图显示, 青藏高原多年冻土面积约115.02(105.47~129.59)×104km2, 其中, 极稳定型(<−5.0℃)、稳定型(−3.0~−5.0℃)、亚稳定型(−1.5~−3.0℃)、过渡型(−0.5~−1.5...

Data scarcity is a major obstacle for high-resolution mapping of permafrost on the Tibetan Plateau (TP). This study produces a new permafrost stability distribution map for the 2010s (2005-2015) derived from the predicted mean annual ground temperature (MAGT) at a depth of zero annual amplitude (10-25 m) by integrating remotely sensed freezing degr...

Permafrost distribution maps are of importance for environmental assessment, climate system modeling, and practical engineering applications. The scarcity of forcing data and parameters often limits the uses of permafrost models over large areas. However, detailed data are often available in a few subregions through field investigations. In this st...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) stored in permafrost across the high-latitude/altitude Northern Hemisphere represents an important potential carbon source under future warming. Here, we provide a comprehensive investigation on the spatiotemporal dynamics of SOC over the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau (TP), which has received less attention compared with t...

The variations on physical properties and microstructures of soils are essential to explore the freeze-thaw mechanisms. We do some experiments on freeze-thaw test of Qinghai-Tibet silty clay and cryo-Scanning Electron Microscope(cryo-SEM) observing after freeze-thaw test, and monitoring the changes of temperature, pore water pressure and displaceme...

《黑河流域模型集成》系统地介绍了黑河流域生态-水文-经济集成建模的总体思路、建模方法，以及在上游寒区生态水文模型集成、中游干旱区地表地下水耦合建模及生态水文模型集成、整个流域经济模型、流域水资源管理决策支持系统等方面取得的研究成果。我们希望藉此书，向同行全面介绍黑河模型集成的阶段性成果，并在此基础上，拓清继续努力的方向。 流域科学研究中的模型集成可概括为“水－土－气－生－人”集成模型的发展。它一般应包括地表水、地下水、水质、能量平衡、植被动态/作物生长、碳氮等生物地球化学循环、土壤侵蚀等模块，有些模型还实现了和大气模型的单向（大气模型作为驱动）或双向耦合，并进一步耦合土地利用、水资源及社会经济模型。 《黑河流域模型集成》（程国栋等著. 北京：科学出版社, 2019.11）一书系统地反映了...

A clear bias exists in the widely used gridded precipitation products (GPPs) that result from factors about topography, climate, and retrieval algorithms. Many existing optimization works have a deficiency in validation and domain sizes, which makes the evaluation and corrections of the Climate Hazards group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data...

青藏高原是全球中纬度面积最大的多年冻土分布区, 青藏高原多年冻土对东亚季风乃至全球气候系统都有重要影响. 本文在前人研究成果的基础上, 系统地梳理了青藏高原多年冻土基本特征的现状, 主要包括活动层厚度,多年冻土面积、温度和厚度的空间分布, 以及多年冻土区地下冰和土壤碳储量等方面的研究进展. 通过补充最近监测资料, 阐述了高原尺度活动层和多年冻土热状况的动态变化过程及趋势, 并分析了这种变化的水文效应. 随后,概述了多年冻土与生态系统、多年冻土与碳循环相互作用关系方面的研究进展. 青藏高原多年冻土在过去数十年来发生了不同程度的退化, 对多年冻土区地表的水、土、气、生间的相互作用关系发生了显著影响, 进而影响着区域水文、生态乃至全球气候系统. 本研究可为冻土与气候变化相互作用关系的机理研究提供思...

Phenology plays a fundamental role in regulating photosynthesis, evapotranspiration, and surface energy fluxes and is sensitive to climate change. The global mean surface air temperature data indicate a global warming hiatus between 1998 and 2012, while its impacts on global phenology remains unclear. Here we use long-term satellite and FLUXNET rec...

Gridded precipitation products have been widely used in scientific literatures, e.g., weather forecasting, hydrological process modelling and disaster simulating. However, it is necessary to evaluate their accuracies before using them for practical purposes. In this study, three mainstream different-spatial-scale daily gridded precipitation data (G...

The solar radiation incident in a mountainous area with a complex terrain has a strong spatial heterogeneity due to the variations in slope orientation (self-shading) and shadows cast by surrounding topography agents (topographic shading). Although slope self-shading has been well studied and considered in most land surface and hydrological models,...

A watershed, regarded as the ideal unit for practicing earth system science, possesses all of the complexities of the land surface system. Thus, building a watershed observing system and conducting a field experiment for the observation of the ecohydrological processes at watershed scale is the best way to understand the complexities of the land su...

Western thought since the Enlightenment has been predominantly linear in scope, while Eastern philosophy has focused mostly on the cyclical. Recent advances in complex systems, however, have highlighted the importance of cycles in nature, thereby opening an avenue for new common endeavors.This analysis centers on the role of autocatalytic loops and...

Watershed system models are urgently needed to understand complex watershed systems and to support integrated river basin management. Early watershed modeling efforts focused on the representation of hydrologic processes; while the next-generation watershed models should represent the co-evolution of the water-land-air-plant-human nexus in a waters...

China's “Developing a Water-saving Society” policy is an ambitious water conservation strategy. However, there has been little evidence of the policy's effectiveness in terms of saving water at a river basin level. In this paper, we used a basin-scale hydroeconomic input-output model to calculate the water consumption (WC) by producers and consumer...

The arid region of Northwest China (ANC) has a distinct and fragile inland water cycle. This study examined the hydrological variations in ANC and its three subregions from August 2002 to December 2013 by integrating terrestrial water storage (TWS) anomaly data derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite, soil moistur...

Air temperature increases thermally degrade permafrost, which has widespread impacts on engineering design, resource development, and environmental protection in cold regions. This study evaluates the potential thermal degradation of permafrost over the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) from the 1960s to the 2000s using estimated decadal mean annual air...

Endorheic basins around the world are suffering from water and ecosystem crisis. To pursue sustainable development, quantifying the hydrological cycle is fundamentally important. However, knowledge gaps exist in how climate change and human activities influence the hydrological cycle in endorheic basins. We used an integrated eco-hydrological model...

Accurate information on the distribution of permafrost and its thermal and hydrological properties is critical for environmental management and engineering development. This study modeled the current state of permafrost on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), including the spatial distribution of permafrost, active-layer thickness (ALT), mean annual gr...

Vegetation phenology is a sensitive indicator of climate change, and has significant effects on the exchange of carbon, water and energy between the terrestrial biosphere and the atmosphere. The Tibetan Plateau, the Earth's “third pole”, is a unique region for studying the long-term trends in vegetation phenology in response to climate change becau...

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) has the largest areas of permafrost terrain in the mid- and low-latitude regions of the world. Some permafrost distribution maps have been compiled but, due to limited data sources, ambiguous criteria, inadequate validation, and deficiency of high-quality spatial data sets, there is high uncertainty in the mapping of the pe...

Individually, ground-based, in situ observations, remote sensing, and regional climate modeling cannot provide the high-quality precipitation data required for hydrological prediction, especially over complex terrains. Data assimilation techniques can be used to bridge the gap between observations and models by assimilating ground observations and...

Soil temperature plays a key role in hydro-thermal processes in environments and is a critical variable linking surface structure to soil processes. There is a need for more accurate temperature simulation models, particularly in Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet) Plateau (QXP). In this study, a model was developed for the simulation of hourly soil surface tem...

Climate change has a complex effect on snow at the regional scale. The change in snow patterns under climate change remains unknown for certain regions. Here, we used high spatiotemporal resolution snow-related variables simulated by a weather research and forecast model (WRF) including snowfall, snow water equivalent and snow depth along with frac...

In cold regions, the occurrence of frozen ground has a fundamental control over the character of the water cycle. To investigate the impact of changing ground temperature conditions on hydrological processes in the context of climate change, a distributed hydrological model with an explicit frozen ground module was applied to an alpine watershed in...

Key message The heterogeneous stem radial growth of Populus euphratica and its correlation with hydrology and climate factors were investigated by a tree-ring study in Ejina Oasis in Northwest China. Abstract Over the last several decades, riparian forests in Northwest China have been extremely vulnerable to the increasing pressures from human acti...

Photosynthesis is a very important sub-process in the carbon cycle and is a crucial sub-modular function in carbon cycle models. In this study, two typical photosynthesis parameterization schemes were compared based on meteorological and eddy covariance (EC) observations at an alpine meadow site. The photosynthesis model parameters were estimated u...

In cold regions, the occurrence of frozen ground has a fundamental control over the character of the water cycle. To investigate the impact of changing ground temperature conditions on hydrological processes in the context of climate change, a distributed hydrological model with an explicit frozen ground module was applied to an alpine watershed in...

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) possesses the largest areas of permafrost terrain in the mid- and low-latitude regions of the world. A detailed database of the distribution and characteristics of permafrost is crucial for engineering planning, water resource management, ecosystem protection, climate modelling, and carbon cycle research. Although some perm...

In order to promote the development of socio-hydrology research and its application in basin water resources management, it is necessary to carry on a stage review of the researches and studies on socio-hydrology in recent years and recommend future research directions. The paper firstly introduces the establishment of socio-hydrology from the deve...

Permafrost is determined to a large extent by the Earth’s surface temperature, therefore it distributes mainly in high altitude and latitude regions. However, stable, warm (about −1 °C) permafrost occurs within a scree slope in northern China that is more than 600 km south of the southernmost limit of latitudinal permafrost on the Eurasian Continen...

Soil thermal diffusivity is a crucial physical parameter that affects soil temperature. By applying sinusoidal boundary conditions, an analytical solution using separated variables for the heat conduction-convection equation was developed. The thermal diffusivity and liquid water flux density were calculated with data collected at field observation...

Permafrost collapse, known as thermokarst, can alter soil properties and carbon emissions. However, little is known regarding the effects of permafrost collapse in upland landscapes on the biogeochemical processes that affect carbon balance. In this study, we measured soil carbon and physiochemical properties at a large thermokarst feature on a hil...

Thermokarst lakes are widely distributed on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), which accounts for 8% of the global permafrost area. These lakes probably promote organic matter biodegradation and thus accelerate the emission of carbon-based greenhouse gases. However, little is known about greenhouse gas concentrations and their stable isotopes chara...

Water system is affected by both human and natural systems, and shows the characteristics of complex systems dynamics, unpredictability and uncertainty, thus becomes the difficult challenge to the human sustainable development. Humans and their actions are considered as a part of water cycle dynamics in socio-hydrology, and the aim is to predict th...

Soil temperature is a key variable in the control of underground hydro-thermal processes. To estimate soil temperature more accurately, this study proposed a solution method of the heat conduction equation of soil temperature (improved heat conduction model) by applying boundary conditions that incorporate the annual and diurnal variations of soil...

Photosynthesis is a very important sub-process in the carbon cycle and is a crucial sub-modular function in carbon cycle models. In this study, two typical photosynthesis parameterization schemes were compared based on meteorological and eddy covariance (EC) observations at an alpine meadow site. The photosynthesis model parameters were estimated u...

To obtain long term accurate high resolution precipitation for the Heihe River Basin (HRB), Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulations were performed using two different initial boundary conditions, with nine microphysical processes for different analysis parameterization schemes. High spatial-temporal precipitation was simulated from...

We discuss the concepts, research methods, and infrastructure of watershed science. A watershed is a basic unit and possesses all of the complexities of the land surface system, thereby making it the best unit for practicing Earth system science. Watershed science is an Earth system science practiced on a watershed scale, and it has developed rapid...

Ten years of ground temperature data (2003-2013) indicate that the long-term thermal regimes within embankments of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (QTR) vary significantly with different embankment structures. Obvious asymmetries exist in the ground temperature fields within the traditional embankment (TE) and the crushed-rock basement embankment (CRBE)....

文章讨论了流域科学的概念、研究方法和基础建设. 流域是自然界的基本单元, 又具有陆地表层系统所有的复杂性, 使得流域成为适合开展地球系统科学实践的绝佳单元. 流域科学是流域尺度上的地球系统科学, 它在过去20多年来快速发展起来, 目标是理解和预测流域复杂系统的行为, 同时服务于流域可持续发展. 然而, 流域科学面临认识复杂系统、实现尺度转换和模拟人-自然系统协同演进等困难, 这些困难的核心是方法论的困难. 本文重点讨论了流域科学的研究方法, 包括自组织复杂系统方法、统计力学主导的升尺度方法、基于选择和进化原理的达尔文学说、强调人-自然协同演进的水经济和生态经济思路、以及非结构化问题综合集成方法. 这些方法一起, 正在搭起整体和还原方法之间的桥梁, 构建起一个兼顾硬集成和软集成, 既考虑自然系...

The sensitivity of soil carbon and nitrogen to warming is a major uncertainty in projections of climate. However, previous studies about soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and potential emission predominantly concentrated on the shallow soil layer in high latitude ecosystems. In this study, we analyzed the SOC, total nitrogen (TN) and soil inorganic...

Permafrost in China mainly located in high-altitude areas. It represents a unique and suitable ecological niche that can be colonized by abundant microbes. Permafrost microbial community varies across geographically separated locations in China, and some lineages are novel and possible endemic. Besides, Chinese permafrost is a reservoir of function...

An accurate estimation of carbon fluxes is very important in carbon cycle studies. A remote sensing based gross primary production (GPP) and net ecosystem production (NEP) algorithm, RS-CFLUX, was presented in this work. The algorithm was calibrated with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method at Daman superstation and Zhangye wetland station in the...

The current Northern Circumpolar Soil Carbon Database did not include organic carbon storage in permafrost regions on the Qinghai–Xizang (Tibetan) Plateau (QXP). In this study, we reported a new estimation of soil organic carbon (SOC) pools in the permafrost regions on the QXP up to 25 m depth using a total of 190 soil profiles. The SOC pools were...

Drought is a complex natural hazard which can have negative effects on agriculture, economy, and human life. In this paper, the primary goal is to explore the application of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) gravity satellite data for the quantitative investigation of the recent drought dynamic over the arid land of northwestern C...

Presently, Northern Circumpolar Soil Carbon Database was not involved permafrost organic carbon storage on the Qinghai–Xizang (Tibetan) Plateau (QXP). Here we reported a new estimation of soil organic carbon (SOC) pools of the permafrost regions on the QXP at different layers from the top 1 to 25 m depth using a total of 706 soil profiles. The SOC...

The ecological water diversion project in the Heihe River Basin is the first successful case in China in which the ecological systems in a river basin have been rescued. This project serves as a valuable example for the management of ecosystems in other inland river basins. This paper reviews the integrated studies of the water–ecosystem–economy re...