
Lan Wang-ErlandssonStockholm University | SU · Stockholm Resilience Centre
Lan Wang-Erlandsson
PhD
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91
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Introduction
Theme Leader of the Anthropocene Dynamics theme and Researcher at the Planetary Boundaries Research Lab at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden. Research interests include water and land resilience, and land-water-climate interactions.
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Publications
Publications (91)
This study presents an "Earth observation-based" method for estimating root zone storage capacity – a critical, yet uncertain parameter in hydrological and land surface modelling. By assuming that vegetation optimises its root zone storage capacity to bridge critical dry periods, we were able to use state-of-the-art satellite-based evaporation data...
An ecosystem service is a benefit derived by humanity that can be traced back to an ecological process. Although ecosystem services related to surface water have been thoroughly described, the relationship between atmospheric water and ecosystem services has been mostly neglected, and perhaps misunderstood. Recent advances in land-atmosphere modeli...
Moisture recycling, the contribution of terrestrial evaporation to
precipitation, has important implications for both water and land management.
Although terrestrial evaporation consists of different fluxes (i.e.
transpiration, vegetation interception, floor interception, soil moisture
evaporation, and open-water evaporation), moisture recycling (t...
arising from S. Jasechko et al. Nature 496, 347-350 (2013)10.1038/nature11983How best to assess the respective importance of plant transpiration over evaporation from open waters, soils and short-term storage such as tree canopies and understories (interception) has long been debated. On the basis of data from lake catchments, Jasechko et al. concl...
The Loess Plateau in China has experienced a remarkable greening trend due to vegetation restoration efforts in recent decades. However, the response of precipitation to this greening remains uncertain. In this study, we identified and evaluated the main moisture source regions for precipitation over the Loess Plateau from 1982 to 2019 using a mois...
Tropical rainforests rely on their root systems to access moisture stored in soil during wet periods for use during dry periods. When this root zone soil moisture is inadequate to sustain a forest ecosystem, they transition to a savanna-like state, losing their native structure and functions. Yet the influence of climate change on ecosystem's root...
Tropical rainforests rely on their root systems to access moisture stored in soil during wet periods for use during dry periods. When this root zone soil moisture is inadequate to sustain a forest ecosystem, they transition to a savanna-like state, losing their native structure and functions. Yet the influence of climate change on ecosystem's root...
Tropical rainforests rely on their root systems to access moisture stored in soil during wet periods for use during dry periods. When this root zone soil moisture is inadequate to sustain a forest ecosystem, they transition to a savanna-like state, losing their native structure and functions. Yet the influence of climate change on ecosystem's root...
The Earth is greening in many regions due to increased temperature, higher atmospheric CO 2 concentration, and land use change. However, while climate change has been accelerating, greening has not kept pace in many regions. Here, we show that decreasing water availability and increasing atmospheric water demand are regionally coinciding with brown...
Increasing climatic and human pressures are changing the world's water resources and hydrological processes at unprecedented rates. Understanding these changes requires comprehensive monitoring of water resources. Hydrogeodesy, the science that measures the Earth's solid and aquatic surfaces, gravity field, and their changes over time, delivers a r...
The root zone is a vital part of the Earth system and a key element in hydrology, ecology, agronomy, and land surface processes. However, its definition varies across disciplines, creating barriers to interdisciplinary understanding. Moreover, characterizing the root zone is challenging due to a lack of consensus on definitions, estimation methods,...
Brazil has the largest cattle herd on the planet, yet little is known about the amount of water consumed by the sector. Cattle are typically raised in extensive pasture systems containing natural and human-made small farm dams that serve as the main drinking water source. Mapping these dams and quantifying their evaporation across Brazil is a major...
Transboundary assessments of water security typically adopt an ‘upstream’ perspective, focusing on hazards and vulnerabilities occurring within a given hydrological basin. However, as the moisture that provides precipitation in the hydrological basin probably originates ‘upwind’, hazards and vulnerabilities potentially altering the moisture supply...
We bring together two decades of research on cross-scale spatial and temporal connectivity of water in the Anthropocene to understand the implications for institutional fit and water governance, with a focus on river basin organizations and watershed-based bodies. There is strong evidence showing how hydrological cycles are tightly coupled across l...
Adaptation of ecosystems' root zones to climate change critically affects drought resilience and vegetation productivity. However, a global quantitative assessment of this mechanism is missing. Therefore, we analyzed observation-based data and found that the global average root zone water storage capacity (SR) increased by 11%, from 182 to 201 mm i...
Non-Technical Summary
Human societies are changing where and how water flows through the atmosphere. However, these changes in the atmospheric water cycle are not being managed, nor is there any real sense of where these changes might be headed in the future. Thus, we develop a new economic theory of atmospheric water management, and explore this t...
Human actions compromise the many life-supporting functions provided by the freshwater cycle. Yet, scientific understanding of anthropogenic freshwater change and its long-term evolution is limited. Here, using a multi-model ensemble of global hydrological models, we estimate how, over a 145-year industrial period (1861–2005), streamflow and soil m...
Despite their importance, wetland ecosystems protected by the Ramsar Convention are under pressure from climate change and human activities. These drivers are altering water availability in these wetlands, changing water levels or surface water extent, in some cases, beyond historical variability. Attribution of the effects of human and climate act...
The concept of “root zone” is widely used in hydrology, agronomy, and land surface process studies. However, the root zone still lacks a precise definition. More essentially, the importance of root zone in the Earth system science is largely under explored. Furthermore, the methodology to estimate root zone is still controversial. In this study, we...
Non-technical summary
In this paper, we explore how critically important ecosystems on the land provide evaporation to the atmosphere, which will later fall as precipitation elsewhere. Using a model-based analysis that tracks water flowing through the atmosphere, we find that more than two-thirds of the precipitation over critically important ecosy...
Despite their importance, wetland ecosystems protected through the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands are under pressure from climate change and human activities. These drivers are altering water availability in these wetlands, changing water levels or surface extent, in some cases, beyond historical variability. Attribution of the effects of human and...
Forestation efforts are accelerating across the globe in the fight against global climate change, in order to restore biodiversity, and to improve local livelihoods. Yet, so far the non‐local effects of forestation on rainfall have largely remained a blind spot. Here we build upon emerging work to propose that targeted rainfall enhancement may also...
Precipitation is essential for food production in Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 80 % of agriculture is rainfed. Although ~40 % of precipitation in certain regions is recycled moisture from Africa's tropical rainforest, there needs to be more knowledge about how this moisture supports the continent's agriculture. In this study, we quantify all...
The Anthropocene is characterized by accelerating change and global challenges of increasing complexity. Inspired by what some have called a polycrisis, we explore whether the human trajectory of increasing complexity and influence on the Earth system could become a form of trap for humanity. Based on an adaptation of the evolutionary traps concept...
Root zone soil moisture is a key variable representing water cycle dynamics that strongly interact with ecohydrological, atmospheric, and biogeochemical processes. Recently, it was proposed as the control variable for the green water planetary boundary, suggesting that widespread and considerable deviations from baseline variability now predispose...
This planetary boundaries framework update finds that six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity. Ocean acidification is close to being breached, while aerosol loading regionally exceeds the boundary. Stratospheric ozone levels have slightly recovered. The transgre...
A substantial amount of the tropical forests of South America and Africa is generated through moisture recycling (i.e., forest rainfall self-reliance). Thus, deforestation that reduces evaporation and dampens the water cycle can further increase the risk of water-stress-induced forest loss in downwind areas, particularly during water scarce periods...
Humanity is modifying the atmospheric water cycle, via land use, climate change, air pollution, and weather modification. Given the implications of this, we present a theoretical framing of atmospheric water as an economic good. Historically, atmospheric water was tacitly considered a ‘public good’ since it was neither actively consumed (rival) nor...
The freshwater ecosystems around the world are degrading, such that maintaining environmental flow1 (EF) in river networks is critical to their preservation. The relationship between streamflow alterations (subsequent EF violations2) and the freshwater biodiversity response is well established at the scale of stream reaches or small basins (∼<100 k...
Root-zone soil moisture is a key variable representing water cycle dynamics that strongly interacts with ecohydrological, atmospheric, and biogeochemical processes. Recently, it was proposed as the control variable for the green water planetary boundary, suggesting that widespread and considerable deviations from baseline variability now predispose...
The Budyko framework consists of a curvilinear relationship between the evaporative ratio (i.e., actual evaporation over precipitation) and the aridity index (i.e., potential evaporation over precipitation) and defines evaporation's water and energy limits. A basin's movement within the Budyko space illustrates its hydroclimatic change and helps id...
Several safe boundaries of critical Earth system processes have already been crossed due to human perturbations; not accounting for their interactions may further narrow the safe operating space for humanity. Using expert knowledge elicitation, we explored interactions among seven variables representing Earth system processes relevant to food produ...
Human actions compromise the many life-supporting functions of the global freshwater cycle. Yet, an encompassing analysis of humanity’s aggregate impact on the freshwater cycle is still missing. We compare the current state of the freshwater cycle against a stable reference state by estimating the global area experiencing streamflow and soil moistu...
Human actions and climate change have drastically altered river flows across the world, resulting in adverse effects on riverine ecosystems. Environmental flows (EFs) have emerged as a prominent tool for safeguarding the riverine ecosystems, but at the global scale, the assessment of EFs is associated with high uncertainty related to the hydrologic...
Key Messages:
(1) Water use and deforestation assessments are complementary in describing sustainable supply chains.
(2) Reducing tropical deforestation in supply chains can reduce risks linked to climate change and water resources.
(3) Top forest-risk commodities imported into the EU rely exclusively on precipitation.
(4) Other commodities, less p...
[Free access to the full text at: https://rdcu.be/cL78K]
Green water — terrestrial precipitation, evaporation and soil moisture — is fundamental to Earth system dynamics and is now extensively perturbed by human pressures at continental to planetary scales. However, green water lacks explicit consideration in the existing planetary boundaries fra...
The freshwater ecosystems around the world are degrading, such that maintaining environmental flow (EF) in river networks is critical to their preservation. The relationship between streamflow alterations and, respectively, EF violations, and freshwater biodiversity is well established at the scale of stream reaches or small basins (~<100 km2). How...
Forest and savanna ecosystems naturally exist as alternative stable states. The maximum capacity of these ecosystems to absorb perturbations without transitioning to the other alternative stable state is referred to as ‘resilience’. Previous studies have determined the resilience of terrestrial ecosystems to hydroclimatic changes predominantly base...
Heatwaves are extreme weather events that have become more frequent and intense in Europe over the past decades. Heatwaves are often coupled to droughts. The combination of them lead to severe ecological and socio-economic impacts. Heatwaves can self-amplify through internal climatic feedback that reduces local precipitation. Understanding the terr...
Ongoing and future hydroclimatic changes have large environmental and societal impacts. In terrestrial ecosystems, these changes are usually described with the terms ‘wetter’ and ‘drier’, which refer to the change in the quantity and/or presence of water, either as water fluxes or stocks. We conducted a literature review of almost 500 recent climat...
The global hydrological cycle is characterized by complex interdependencies and self-regulating feedbacks that keep water in an ever-evolving state of flux at local, regional, and global levels. Increasingly, the scale of human impacts in the Anthropocene is altering the dynamics of this cycle, which presents additional challenges for water governa...
Several safe boundaries of critical Earth system processes have already been crossed by human perturbations. Recent research indicates that not accounting for the interactions between these processes may further narrow the safe operating space for humanity. Yet existing work accounts only for transgression of single boundaries and only a few studie...
Forest and savanna ecosystems naturally exist as alternative stable states. The maximum capacity of these ecosystems to absorb perturbations without transitioning to the other alternative stable state is referred to as ‘resilience’. Previous studies have determined the resilience of terrestrial ecosystems to hydroclimatic changes predominantly base...
Human actions and climate change have drastically altered river flows across the world, resulting in adverse effects on riverine ecosystems. Environmental flows (EFs) have emerged as a prominent tool for safeguarding riverine ecosystems. However, at the global scale, the assessment of EFs is associated with significant uncertainty. Here, we present...
The semi-arid Sahel is a global hotspot for poverty and malnutrition. Rainfed agriculture is the main source of food and income, making the well-being of rural population highly sensitive to rainfall variability. Studies have reported an upward trend in annual precipitation in the Sahel since the drought of the 1970s and early '80s, yet farmers hav...
The freshwater cycle over land is fundamental for sustainability and resilience, yet is extensively modified and shaped by a vast range of human interventions in the land, water, and climate systems. The consequences of human water-cycle modifications can be non-linear, delayed, and distributed across boundaries, sectors, and scale. This complexity...
Climate change and deforestation have increased the risk of drought-induced forest-to-savanna transitions across the tropics and subtropics. However, the present understanding of forest-savanna transitions is generally focused on the influence of rainfall and fire regime changes, but does not take into account the adaptability of vegetation to drou...
Tropical forests modify the conditions they depend on through feedbacks at different spatial scales. These feedbacks shape the hysteresis (history-dependence) of tropical forests, thus controlling their resilience to deforestation and response to climate change. Here, we determine the emergent hysteresis from local-scale tipping points and regional...
Fresh water—the bloodstream of the biosphere—is at the center of the planetary drama of the Anthropocene. Water fluxes and stores regulate the Earth's climate and are essential for thriving aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, as well as water, food, and energy security. But the water cycle is also being modified by humans at an unprecedented scale...
The planetary boundaries framework proposes quantified guardrails to human modification of global environmental processes that regulate the stability of the planet and has been considered in sustainability science, governance, and corporate management. However, the planetary boundary for human freshwater use has been critiqued as a singular measure...
The planetary boundaries framework defines the “safe operating space for humanity” represented by nine global processes that can destabilize the Earth System if perturbed. The water planetary boundary attempts to provide a global limit to anthropogenic water cycle modifications, but it has been challenging to translate and apply it to the regional...
The authors wish to make the following correction to this paper: The author name “Zahra Kalantary” should be “Zahra Kalantari” [...]