Deforestation, Cloud Formation, and Hydrological Coupling of Lowland and Montane Systems in the Tropics

该项目将加深对热带森林砍伐与积云形成和环境复杂地形中地形产生的云库之间联系的理解。利用遥感云观测在土地利用和土地覆盖发生变化的地区推进水文预测将是一个重要的项目目标。这项研究的动机是需要理解和模拟地形区域水文循环中的陆面相互作用和云连接，例如哥斯达黎加北部的热带山地云雾森林生态系统。这项研究将涉及区域大气模拟、陆地表面特征和云分布的遥感以及土壤湿度和云底高度的现场监测。Drs。Welch、Han和Lawton（阿拉巴马大学亨茨维尔分校）期望项目活动能够深入了解热带山区低地森林砍伐、流域管理、生态系统功能和生物多样性保护的原因。该项目由美国国家科学基金会的水和能源：大气、植物和地球（WEAVE）相互作用项目支持，该项目旨在提高对地球水文和能源循环的理解，以支持更好地评估人类活动对这些循环特别是对气候系统的潜在影响。

The project will develop understanding of the linkage of tropical deforestation with cumulus cloud formation and orographically generated cloud-banks in environmentally complex terrain. Advancing hydrologic predictions in regions undergoing land-use and land cover change from the use of remotely sensed cloud observations will be an important project objective. The research is motivated by the need to understand and model land-surface interactions and cloud connections in regional hydrologic cycling in terrain regions such as the tropical montane cloud forest ecosystems of northern Costa Rica. The research will involve regional atmospheric modeling, remote sensing of land-surface characteristics and cloud distribution, and on-site monitoring of soil moisture and cloud-base heights. Drs. Welch, Han, and Lawton (University of Alabama, Huntsville) expect project activities to shed insight into causes of lowland deforestation, watershed management, ecosystem functioning, and biodiversity conservation in mountainous parts of the tropics. The project is supported by NSF's Water and Energy: Atmospheric, Vegetative, and Earth (WEAVE) interactions program, which seeks to improve understanding of the Earth's hydrologic and energy cycles to support better assessments of the potential impact of human activities on those cycles and on the climate system, in particular.