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Abstract Climate sensitive mountain wetlands are complex eco-hydrologic interactions that make their future behavior difficult to predict, and the lack of long-term systematic observations compounds this difficulty. To overcome these limitations, this study developed an eco-hydrologic model that reflects only the essential eco-hydrologic processes in mountain wetlands, and explored the hydrologic response of mountain wetlands to the presence or absence of vegetation and the elasticity of mountain wetland’s vegetation to climate and hydrologic variables. Based on an eco-hydrologic model customized for the Janggun wetland and Hwaeom marsh in the southeastern Korea, this study derived elasticity curve across multiple percentiles and found that the climate elasticity of hydrologic components varied significantly with the presence or absence of vegetation. In particular, vegetation was more sensitive to maximum temperature than precipitation, and the effect of temperature was greater during the vegetation die-off period. In addition, the vegetation in Janggun wetland and Hwaeom marsh exhibited distinct sensitivities responding more strongly to soil moisture and groundwater exchange rate, respectively, suggest that the hydro-geomorphologic characteristics of mountain wetlands may play a critical role in determining how climate change affects wetland vegetation. The eco-hydrologic model, including the vegetation module, is expected to serve as a basic tool for climate change adaptation strategies in mountain wetlands in the future.
Seo et al. (Sat,) studied this question.