Lishan Ran

Lishan Ran
The University of Hong Kong | HKU · Department of Geography

PhD

About

109
Publications
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2,865
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Publications

Publications (109)
Article
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Excessive total suspended matter (TSM) concentrations can exert a considerable impact on the growth of aquatic organisms in fishponds, representing a significant risk to aquaculture health. This study revised existing unified models using empirical data to develop an optimized TSM retrieval model tailored for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater B...
Article
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Anthropogenic perturbations have substantially altered riverine carbon cycling worldwide, exerting influences on dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) dynamics at multiple levels. However, the magnitude and role of anthropogenic activities in modulating carbon emissions across entire river networks, as well as the influence of climatic c...
Article
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River damming can significantly alter the hydrology and nutrient levels of river water, resulting in substantial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere. However, the dynamics of greenhouse gases in the discharged water downstream of dams remain poorly understood, despite being recognized as a crucial source of GHG emissions in river‐reser...
Article
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Afforestation represents an effective approach for ecosystem restoration and carbon (C) sequestration. Nonetheless, it poses notable challenges concerning water depletion and soil drought in (semi)arid regions. The underlying mechanisms regulating the influence of afforestation on soil carbon‐water dynamics, particularly how deep soil C reacts to a...
Article
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Previous studies typically assumed a constant total organic carbon (OC) storage in the lake water column, neglecting its significant variability within a changing world. Based on extensive field data and satellite monitoring techniques, we demonstrate considerable spatiotemporal variability in OC concentration and storage for 24,366 Chinese lakes d...
Article
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Aquaculture plays a vital role in global food production, with fish pond water quality directly impacting aquatic product quality. The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) serves as a key producer of aquatic products in South China. Monitoring environmental changes in fish ponds serves as an indicator of their health. This study employe...
Article
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Rivers are important ecosystems for carbon emissions and play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle. However, CO2 and CH4 emissions from subtropical rivers are substantially under‐represented in global‐scale estimates. Here, we explored the regional patterns of riverine CO2 and CH4 dynamics in the Pearl River basin with a subtropical monsoon cl...
Article
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Inland waters are significant emitters of greenhouse gases for the atmosphere and play an important role in the global carbon cycle. With a vast land area in East Asia spanning a broad range of climatic conditions, China has a large number of natural and human‐made water bodies. These inland water systems are of global importance because of their h...
Article
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East Asia (China, Japan, Koreas, and Mongolia) has been the world's economic engine over at least the past two decades, exhibiting a rapid increase in fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and has expressed the recent ambition to achieve climate neutrality by mid‐century. However, the GHG balance of its terrestrial ecosystems remains poo...
Article
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Mountainous rivers are critical in transporting dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from terrestrial environments to downstream ecosystems. However, how geomorphologic factors and anthropogenic impacts control the composition and export of DOC in mountainous rivers remains largely unclear. Here, we explore DOC dynamics in three subtropical mountainous c...
Article
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Soil loss by water erosion is one of the main threats to soil health and food production in intensively used agricultural areas. To assess its significance to overall sediment production, we applied the Water and Tillage Erosion Model/Sediment Delivery model (WaTEM/SEDEM) to the Luoyugou catchment, a subcatchment of the Yellow River Basin within th...
Article
The balance between alkalinity generation by carbonate and silicate weathering and sulfuric acid generation by sulfide weathering controls the effect of weathering on atmospheric pCO2 over geologic timescales. How this balance varies across environmental gradients remains poorly constrained. Here, we analyze this balance across an erosional gradien...
Conference Paper
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Das Erosionsmodell WaTEM/SEDEM (Water and Tillage Erosion Model/Sediment Delivery model) ist nicht nur in der Lage, Erosionsraten durch Rillen- und Flächenerosion zu bestimmen, sondern gleichzeitig auch die Deposition von einst erodiertem Material zu berücksichtigen. Daher ist es ein geeigneter Ansatz, um weiterführende Informationen zur räumlichen...
Preprint
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Polluted rivers transport and transform large quantities of anthropogenically-derived organic carbon to coastal regions, and account for an unneglectable share of global CO2 emissions. Effective river water management can enhance water quality and reduce CO2 emissions from the surface water to the atmosphere. However, the effect of water management...
Article
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Soil conservation is of global importance, as accelerated soil erosion by human activity is a primary threat to ecosystem viability. However, the significance and role of soil conservation in reshaping landscape carbon (C) accounting has not been comprehensively integrated in the terrestrial C sink. Here, we present the first integrated assessment...
Article
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River transport of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to the ocean is a crucial but poorly quantified regional carbon cycle component. Large uncertainties remaining on the riverine DOC export from China, as well as its trend and drivers of change, have challenged the reconciliation between atmosphere-based and land-based estimates of China's land carbo...
Preprint
Full-text available
East Asia (China, Japan, Koreas and Mongolia) has been the world’s economic engine over at least the past two decades, exhibiting a rapid increase in fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and has expressed the recent ambition to achieve climate neutrality by mid-century. However, the GHG balance of its terrestrial ecosystems remains poor...
Article
Full-text available
Inland waters are important sources of the greenhouse gasses (GHGs) carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) to the atmosphere. In the framework of the second phase of the REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP‐2) initiative, we synthesize existing estimates of GHG emissions from streams, rivers, lakes and reservo...
Article
Full-text available
Inland waters are important emitters of the greenhouse gasses (GHGs) carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) to the atmosphere. In the framework of the 2nd phase of the REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP‐2) initiative, we review the state of the art in estimating inland water GHG budgets at global scale, whi...
Article
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Although there have been many studies related to the municipal solid waste (MSW) problem in Hong Kong, only limited research has recently discussed the spatial variation of citizens’ environmental awareness in different geographical constituencies. Also, the relationship between environmental awareness of citizens and the effectiveness of waste man...
Preprint
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Soil erosion by water and loss of soil organic carbon (SOC) are two major contributors to global land degradation. However, the impact of soil erosion and its effect on SOC in the fragile, sensitive alpine ecosystem of the Tibetan Plateau, where climate change is amplified, is not well understood. We used the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) ens...
Article
Riverine water and sediment discharge drive global material circulation and energy transfer, and they are crucial to the biogeochemical cycle. We investigated the changes in water-sediment fluxes in six major rivers from north to south in China from the mid-1950s to 2020 under the influence of climate change and human activities, and quantified the...
Article
In recent decades, the increasing frequency and magnitude of extreme hydrological events due to climate change and human activities have caused substantial economic losses and damages to human wellbeing. Here, we investigated the spatiotemporal variations of streamflow extremes (QE) and sediment load extremes (SE) in the Yellow River (YR) during 19...
Article
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Understanding the processes governing lateral terrestrial organic carbon transfer is confounded by the fact that organic carbon deposits on land have not yet been fully explored. Despite recent advances in understanding organic carbon deposition in aquatic ecosystems, the burial of organic carbon in dry depositional environments remains unclear. He...
Preprint
Full-text available
Soil loss by water erosion is one of the main threats to soil health and food production in intensively used agricultural areas. To assess its significance to the overall sediment production we applied the Water and Tillage Erosion Model/Sediment Delivery model (WaTEM/SEDEM) to the Luoyugou catchment, a sub-catchment of the Yellow River basin withi...
Article
River networks represent the largest biogeochemical nexus between the continents, ocean and atmosphere. Our current understanding of the role of rivers in the global carbon cycle remains limited, which makes it difficult to predict how global change may alter the timing and spatial distribution of riverine carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas em...
Article
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Under the influences of global climate change and intense human activities, the hydrological and biogeochemical processes have been undergoing profound changes in most of the world's watersheds. However, the long-term changes in streamflow, sediment load, and nutrient fluxes, and quantitative attribution of these changes from a basin-wide perspecti...
Article
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Riverine carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are an essential component of the riverine carbon cycle, but an accurate assessment of riverine CO2 emission fluxes is still hindered by the spatial and temporal variations among river basins caused by differences in climate, watershed characteristics, and human activity. Here, we evaluate the riverine CO2 fl...
Preprint
Full-text available
Mountainous rivers (MRs) are one of the critical systems in transporting dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from terrestrial environments to downstream ecosystems. However, how geographical factors and anthropogenic impacts control the composition and export of DOC in mountainous rivers remains largely unclear. Here, we explore DOC dynamics in three su...
Article
China has implemented a series of ambitious soil and water conservation (SWC) projects on the Chinese Loess Plateau, which have significantly changed the erosion, transport, and deposition of sediment. As a result, the sediment flux of the Yellow River, once the largest carrier of fluvial sediment worldwide, has been reduced by approximately 85% in...
Article
Inland waters have been increasingly viewed as hotspots for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions owing to their strong capability to intercept and mineralize carbon from the terrestrial environment. Although small waterbodies in humid subtropical climates have the potential to emit considerable amounts of GHG, their emission patterns have remained unders...
Article
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Dominant functions usually vary greatly in different reaches of mountainous rivers and are influenced by different adjacent land uses. Assessing river health based on dominant functions is of great practical value to river management. To reveal the health status of different reaches in Beijing’s northern mountainous rivers, 60 investigated plots (r...
Article
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In order to understand the organic carbon dynamics in urban rivers, the present study monitored the total organic carbon (TOC) concentration and export in the Shenzhen River and Bay basin. The results show that the average TOC concentrations ranged from 7.04 to 17.50 mg/L in the study area, which exhibited pronounced spatial and temporal variations...
Article
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China has implemented the world's largest‐ever vegetation restoration program in marginal mountainous areas to sustain life on land. However, land competition between the demand for grain and the need for green has threatened sustainable vegetation restoration. Here, focusing on China's marginal mountainous areas with the highest density of slope c...
Article
Vegetation restoration plays an important role in enhancing soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration. However, there are diverse types of vegetation restoration with different SOC sequestration rates. Understanding the dynamic of SOC at topsoil (0–20 cm) and potential problems of the different types (i.e., woodlands, shrub lands, artificial grasslan...
Article
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The magnitude of the carbon (C) sink due to terrestrial primary production may be overestimated if the C losses through fluvial networks are not properly accounted for. In this study, we hypothesize that terrestrial‐aquatic C transfers represent a major loss of the terrestrial C sink in semiarid catchments. To test the hypothesis, we assessed the n...
Article
Reservoirs represent a key component of the global carbon cycle. However, estimates of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from reservoirs remain poorly constrained due to the absence of spatially and temporally resolved measurements. We performed high-resolution monitoring of CO2 emissions (FCO2) in a semiarid hard-water reservoir to examine its season...
Article
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Estimating riverine carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions has been constrained by lacking field measurements of the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) and inaccuracies in calculating pCO2 using carbonate equilibria-based models such as CO2SYS. To evaluate potential errors in applying the carbonate equilibria-based pCO2 calculation to river systems affected by...
Article
Please cite this article as: S. Chen, J. Zhong, S. Li, et al., Multiple controls on carbon dynamics in mixed karst and non-karst mountainous rivers, Southwest China, revealed by carbon isotopes (δ13C and Δ14C), Science of the Total Environment (2018), https://doi. Abstract Riverine transport of carbon from the land to the oceans plays a significant...
Article
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Strong anthropogenic activities and climate change have caused distinct hydrology and sediment dynamics in river systems worldwide. Yet, the integrated picture of sediment discharge changes and quantitative attribution of these changes from a basin-wide perspective were limitedly understood. In this study, we quantified the variations of sediment d...
Article
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High-gradient headwater streams are major participants in the carbon (C) cycle because of their capabilities of emitting a significant amount of carbon dioxide (CO2). Notwithstanding, their CO2 emissions have been largely overlooked in previous studies owing to their small water surface area and are sometimes strenuous to be measured because of the...
Article
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Mulberry-dyke-fish pond ecosystems are a representative traditional eco-agriculture in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). Investigations about the changes in the systems and their relevant water environments under the background of rapid urbanization can provide valuable information to formulate sustainable protection and develop...
Article
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CO2 efflux at the water–air interface is an essential component of the riverine carbon cycle. However, the lack of spatially resolved CO2 emission measurements prohibits reliable estimation of the global riverine CO2 emissions. By deploying floating chambers, seasonal changes in river water CO2 partial pressure (pCO2) and CO2 emissions from the Don...
Article
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Rain affects the wind measurement accuracy of the Ku-band spaceborne scatterometer. In order to improve the quality of the retrieved wind field, it is necessary to identify and flag rain-contaminated data. In this study, an HY-2A scatterometer is used to study rain identification. In addition to the conventional parameters, such as the retrieved wi...
Article
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The emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from inland waters are an important component of the global carbon (C) cycle. However, the current understanding of GHGs emissions from arid river systems remains largely unknown. To shed light on GHGs emissions from inland waters in arid regions, high-resolution carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emissi...
Article
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Research on the ionic chemistry of rivers and weathering types provides the basis for elucidating the dynamics of river chemistry and exploring carbon cycling in river systems. There is a lack of water chemistry study in the river systems in the Tibet Plateau, especially in the streams/rivers flowing from and through glaciers and permafrost. Sample...
Article
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Despite growing research on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from inland waters, few systematic efforts have been made to assess the regional‐scale GHG emissions from Asian rivers under increasing anthropogenic stress. We examined factors controlling longitudinal and seasonal variations in the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2), and CH4 and N2O concentra...
Article
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Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to the atmosphere from running waters are estimated to be four times greater than the total carbon (C) flux to the oceans. However, these fluxes remain poorly constrained because of substantial spatial and temporal variability in dissolved CO2 concentrations. Using a global compilation of high-frequency CO2 measuremen...
Article
The lower Yellow River (YR) reach is one of the most typical and complex river channels in the world. The impact of human activities on the evolution of its channels is an important scientific issue that needs to be explored. Based on cross-sectional channel data measured at four typical hydrological stations in the lower YR during the period from...
Article
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Carbon dioxide (CO2) evasion from inland waters is an important component of the global carbon cycle. However, it remains unknown how global change affects CO2 emissions over longer time scales. Here, we present seasonal and annual fluxes of CO2 emissions from streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs throughout China and quantify their changes over t...
Article
River systems are major sources of greenhouse gases (GHG). However, simultaneous CO2 and CH4 emissions from arid/semiarid rivers remain poorly studied. Here we investigated CO2 and CH4 emissions (diffusion + ebullition) and their potential sources and drivers in an arid/semiarid catchment on the Chinese Loess Plateau. The river water CO2 partial pr...
Preprint
Full-text available
CO2 efflux at the water–air interface is an essential component of the riverine carbon cycle. However, the lack of spatially resolved CO2 emission measurement still hinges the accuracy of estimates on global riverine CO2 emissions. By deploying floating chambers, seasonal changes in river water CO2 partial pressure (pCO2) and CO2 evasion from the D...
Article
Floods have become increasingly important in fluvial export of water, sediment and carbon (C). Using high‐frequency sampling, the export of water, sediment and C was examined in the Wuding River catchment on the Chinese Loess Plateau. With groundwater as an important contributor to runoff all year round, floods were relatively less important in the...
Article
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Under the context of climate change, studying CO2 emissions in alpine rivers is important because of the large carbon storage in these terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, riverine partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) and CO2 emission flux (FCO2) in the Yellow River source region (YRSR) under different landcover types, including glaciers, permafrost, p...
Article
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Rivers are under increasing pressure from anthropogenic impacts with incremental dam construction, experiencing global and regional alteration due to river disconnectivity, flow regulation, and sediment reduction. Assessing the cumulative impacts of dams on river disconnectivity in large river basins can help us better understand how humans disinte...