Inland water bodies in China: Features discovered in the long-term satellite data.

Water bodies (WBs), such as lakes, ponds, and impoundments, provide essential ecosystem services for human society, yet their characteristics and changes over large areas remain elusive. Here we used unprecedented data layers derived from all Landsat images available between 1984 and 2015 to understand the overall characteristics and changes of WBs between 2 epochs (i.e., 1984 to 1999 and 2000 to 2015) in China. Results show that the abundance estimate of WBs greater than 1 km2 and the total WB surface area were 0.3 to 1.5 times and 0.2 to 0.5 times more than the previous estimates, respectively. The size-abundance and shoreline-area relationships of WBs in China conformed to the classic power scaling law, in contradiction to most previous studies. WB changes with various occurrence probabilities show widespread coexistence of disappearance of existent and emergence of new WBs across China driven primarily by human activities and climate change. Our results highlight the importance of using appropriate long-term satellite data to reveal the true properties and dynamics of WBs over large areas, which is essential for developing scaling theories and understanding the relative impacts of human activities and climate change on water resources in the world.

Climate regulation, energy provisioning and water purification: Quantifying ecosystem service delivery of bioenergy willow grown on riparian buffer zones using life cycle assessment.

Whilst life cycle assessment (LCA) boundaries are expanded to account for negative indirect consequences of bioenergy such as indirect land use change (ILUC), ecosystem services such as water purification sometimes delivered by perennial bioenergy crops are typically neglected in LCA studies. Consequential LCA was applied to evaluate the significance of nutrient interception and retention on the environmental balance of unfertilised energy willow planted on 50-m riparian buffer strips and drainage filtration zones in the Skåne region of Sweden. Excluding possible ILUC effects and considering oil heat substitution, strategically planted filter willow can achieve net global warming potential (GWP) and eutrophication potential (EP) savings of up to 11.9 Mg CO2e and 47 kg PO4e ha-1 year-1, respectively, compared with a GWP saving of 14.8 Mg CO2e ha-1 year-1 and an EP increase of 7 kg PO4e ha-1 year-1 for fertilised willow. Planting willow on appropriate buffer and filter zones throughout Skåne could avoid 626 Mg year-1 PO4e nutrient loading to waters.