A framework for ensemble modelling of climate change impacts on lakes worldwide: the ISIMIP Lake Sector

Empirical evidence demonstrates that lakes and reservoirs are warming across the globe. Consequently, there is an increased need to project future changes in lake thermal structure and resulting changes in lake biogeochemistry in order to plan for the likely impacts. Previous studies of the impacts of climate change on lakes have often relied on a single model forced with limited scenario-driven projections of future climate for a relatively small number of lakes. As a result, our understanding of the effects of climate change on lakes is fragmentary, based on scattered studies using different data sources and modelling protocols, and mainly focused on individual lakes or lake regions. This has precluded identification of the main impacts of climate change on lakes at global and regional scales and has likely contributed to the lack of lake water quality considerations in policy-relevant documents, such as the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Here, we describe a simulation protocol developed by the Lake Sector of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) for simulating climate change impacts on lakes using an ensemble of lake models and climate change scenarios for ISIMIP phases 2 and 3. The protocol prescribes lake simulations driven by climate forcing from gridded observations and different Earth system models under various representative greenhouse gas concentration pathways (RCPs), all consistently bias-corrected on a 0.5∘ × 0.5∘ global grid. In ISIMIP phase 2, 11 lake models were forced with these data to project the thermal structure of 62 well-studied lakes where data were available for calibration under historical conditions, and using uncalibrated models for 17 500 lakes defined for all global grid cells containing lakes. In ISIMIP phase 3, this approach was expanded to consider more lakes, more models, and more processes. The ISIMIP Lake Sector is the largest international effort to project future water temperature, thermal structure, and ice phenology of lakes at local and global scales and paves the way for future simulations of the impacts of climate change on water quality and biogeochemistry in lakes

Soil erosion modelling: A global review and statistical analysis

To gain a better understanding of the global application of soil erosion prediction models, we comprehensively reviewed relevant peer-reviewed research literature on soil-erosion modelling published between 1994 and 2017.We aimed to identify (i) the processes and models most frequently addressed in the literature, (ii) the regions within which models are primarily applied, (iii) the regions which remain unaddressed and why, and (iv) how frequently studies are conducted to validate/evaluate model outcomes relative to measured data. To perform this task, we combined the collective knowledge of 67 soil-erosion scientists from 25 countries. The resulting database, named ‘Global Applications of Soil Erosion Modelling Tracker (GASEMT)’, includes 3030 individual modelling records from 126 countries, encompassing all continents (except Antarctica). Out of the 8471 articles identified as potentially relevant, we reviewed 1697 appropriate articles and systematically evaluated and transferred 42 relevant attributes into the database. This GASEMT database provides comprehensive insights into the state-of-the-art of soil-erosion models and model applications worldwide. This database intends to support the upcoming country-based United Nations global soil-erosion assessment in addition to helping to inform soil erosion research priorities by building a foundation for future targeted, in-depth analyses. GASEMT is an open-source database available to the entire user-community to develop research, rectify errors, and make future expansions. Authors list: Pasquale Borrelli, Christine Alewell, Pablo Alvarez, Jamil Alexandre Ayach Anache, Jantiene Baartman, Cristiano Ballabio, Nejc Bezak, Marcella Biddoccu, Artemi Cerdà, Devraj Chalise, Songchao Chen, Walter Chen, Anna Maria De Girolamo, Gizaw Desta Gessesse, Detlef Deumlich, Nazzareno Diodato, Nikolaos Efthimiou, Gunay Erpul, Peter Fiener, Michele Freppaz, Francesco Gentile, Andreas Gericke, Nigussie Haregeweyn, Bifeng Hu, Amelie Jeanneau, Konstantinos Kaffas, Mahboobeh Kiani-Harchegani, Ivan Lizaga Villuendas, Changjia Li, Luigi Lombardo, Manuel López-Vicente, Manuel Esteban Lucas-Borja,Michael Märker, Francis Matthews, Chiyuan Miao, Matjaž Mikoš, Sirio Modugno, Markus Möller, Victoria Naipal, Mark Nearing, Stephen Owusu, Dinesh Panday, Edouard Patault, Cristian Valeriu Patriche, Laura Poggio, Raquel Portes, Laura Quijano, Mohammad Reza Rahdari, Mohammed Renima, Giovanni Francesco Ricci, Jesús Rodrigo-Comino, Sergio Saia, Aliakbar Nazari Samani, Calogero Schillaci, Vasileios Syrris, Hyuck Soo Kim, Diogo Noses Spinola, Paulo Tarso Oliveira, Hongfen Teng, Resham Thapa, Konstantinos Vantas, Diana Vieira, Jae E. Yang, Shuiqing Yin, Demetrio Antonio Zema, Guangju Zhao, Panos Panago