Application of the principle of superposition to detect nonlinearity in the short-term atmospheric response to concurrent land-use changes associated with future landscapes

The changes in the atmospheric response (e.g., in the variables of state, the amount of cloud-and precipitating particles, the water- and energy fluxes) to concurrent landuse changes are exemplarly examined for various landscape scenarios since the cessation of open-pit mining. The principle of superposition is applied to detect areas where the atmospheric response is either enhanced or diminished according to concurrent land-use changes as compared to simple land-use changes. The results show that nonlinear behavior of a given quantity may occur in areas without significant changes in this quantity and that a quantity may be significantly changed without finding nonlinearity. Moreover, the concurrent land-use changes do not necessarily yield a stronger atmospheric response than simple landuse changes. In addition to the size of the patches, where land-use changes, the contrast in the hydrologic and thermal behavior of the changes is decisive in measuring the magnitude of the response. Enhancement and diminishment seem also to depend on the land-use adjacent to the altered land-use.