Understanding the influence of land cover change and landscape pattern change on evapotranspiration variations in Gwayi catchment of Zimbabwe

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Date

2022

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Taylor and Francis Group

Abstract

Understanding dynamics in hydrological processes helps toimprove water resource management. Climate and land coverchanges influence ecohydrological processes. This study soughtto assess the influence of climate, land cover and landscape struc-ture dynamics on actual evapotranspiration (ETa). To achieve this,the catchment parameter (w) was parameterised and the relation-ship between ETa and selected landscape metrics was deter-mined. The ratio of precipitation to potential evapotranspirationwas<1 and thewwas<2, suggesting that land cover changeswere more influential to ETa changes than climate variations.Given the loww(1<w<2), we conclude that the catchment hada low water retention capacity and was sensitive to land coverchanges.

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Keywords

Ecohydrology, Ecology, Environmental change, Water security, Zimbabwe

Citation

Gwate, O. et al. (2022). Understanding the influence of land cover change and landscape pattern change on evapotranspiration variations in Gwayi catchment of Zimbabwe. Geocarto International, 37(25), 10016–10032. https://doi.org/10.1080/10106049.2022.2032386