Threshold responses of land surface temperature to local moisture recycling in a mountain-lake-forest composite system
4 affiliations
- 1Provincial Key Laboratory of Plateau Geographic Processes and Environmental Change, Faculty of Geography, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming 650500, China
- 2Provincial Key Laboratory of Plateau Geographic Processes and Environmental Change, Faculty of Geography, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming 650500, China; Corresponding author.
- 3Yunnan Academy of Forestry and Grassland, Kunming 650201, China
- 4Key Laboratory of Geohazard Forecast and Geoecological Restoration in Plateau Mountainous Area Plateau mountains, Ministry of Natural Resources of the People's Republic of China/Yunnan Institute of Geo-Environment Monitoring, Kunming, Yunnan 650216, China
Abstract
Quantifying water-heat coupling in mountain-lake-forest composite systems is important for alleviating surface heat stress in low-latitude mountain tourist cities, yet existing indicators fail to resolve nonlinear threshold transitions between local recycled water vapor contribution ratio( f local ) and land surface temperature(LST). This study proposes a threshold-based indicator approach by integrating stable isotope end-member analysis with multi-scale land surface temperature remote sensing, and applies it to three subsystems (mountain forest-grassland, basin composite, and lake-water) in the Erhai Basin. The Erhai Basin is dominated by advected water vapor in the rainy season(57.90%) and local recycled moisture in the dry season(61.10%). Distinct thermal response regimes emerge across the three subsystems. The mountain forest-grassland system shows significant negative correlations when f local < 30% in the rainy season and < 45% in the dry season; the basin composite system switches from positive to negative correlation at approximately 50% in the rainy season and exhibits strong negative correlation in the dry season; and in the lake water system, advection water vapor masks the local evaporation cooling signal during the rainy season, while sustained lake-surface evaporation maintains stable heat-sink functionality during the dry season. These divergent thresholds reflect differential synergies between surface evaporation and sub-cloud secondary evaporation across ecosystems. This demonstrates that peripheral lake-forest composite ecosystems can effectively alleviate regional surface heat through local moisture recycling and latent heat exchange, offering a nature-based pathway for thermal management in such composite systems, in which subsystem thresholds provide quantitative evidence for heat mitigation strategies.
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BibTeX
@article{wei2026threshold,
title = {{Threshold responses of land surface temperature to local moisture recycling in a mountain-lake-forest composite system}},
author = {Kun Wei and Yuanmei Jiao and Yong Chai and Guoxu Chang and Yiming Yang and Hangwei Zhang and Ying Wang and Shuaiqi Yang and Hua Zhang},
journal = {Ecological Indicators},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1016/j.ecolind.2026.115694},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2026.115694},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Threshold responses of land surface temperature to local moisture recycling in a mountain-lake-forest composite system
AU - Kun Wei
AU - Yuanmei Jiao
AU - Yong Chai
AU - Guoxu Chang
AU - Yiming Yang
AU - Hangwei Zhang
AU - Ying Wang
AU - Shuaiqi Yang
AU - Hua Zhang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
JO - Ecological Indicators
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolind.2026.115694
UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2026.115694
AB - Quantifying water-heat coupling in mountain-lake-forest composite systems is important for alleviating surface heat stress in low-latitude mountain tourist cities, yet existing indicators fail to resolve nonlinear threshold transitions between local recycled water vapor contribution ratio( f local ) and land surface temperature(LST). This study proposes a threshold-based indicator approach by integrating stable isotope end-member analysis with multi-scale land surface temperature remote sensing, and applies it to three subsystems (mountain forest-grassland, basin composite, and lake-water) in the Erhai Basin. The Erhai Basin is dominated by advected water vapor in the rainy season(57.90%) and local recycled moisture in the dry season(61.10%). Distinct thermal response regimes emerge across the three subsystems. The mountain forest-grassland system shows significant negative correlations when f local < 30% in the rainy season and < 45% in the dry season; the basin composite system switches from positive to negative correlation at approximately 50% in the rainy season and exhibits strong negative correlation in the dry season; and in the lake water system, advection water vapor masks the local evaporation cooling signal during the rainy season, while sustained lake-surface evaporation maintains stable heat-sink functionality during the dry season. These divergent thresholds reflect differential synergies between surface evaporation and sub-cloud secondary evaporation across ecosystems. This demonstrates that peripheral lake-forest composite ecosystems can effectively alleviate regional surface heat through local moisture recycling and latent heat exchange, offering a nature-based pathway for thermal management in such composite systems, in which subsystem thresholds provide quantitative evidence for heat mitigation strategies.
SN - 1470-160X
SN - 1872-7034
ER -