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Complexity embedded in coastal management leads to numerous questions as to how inherent spatial and temporal linkages among evapotranspiration (ET), depth to groundwater and land-use/land-cover change (LUCC) could affect the dynamics among these seemingly unrelated events. This article aims to address such unique dynamics in the nexus of physical geography and ecohydrology. To understand such dynamic linkages, a case study was carried out in a fast growing coastal region – the southern Laizhou Bay in Shandong Province, China – by identifying the coastal LUCC at the decadal scale in association with the variations of ET with the aid of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) data. In such a coastal landscape evolutionary assessment, findings show that the major patterns of land use and land cover (LULC) in the study area are farmland, saline-alkali land, developed land, salt land and beach land. Over a 20-year time frame, declining groundwater trends were observed, while ET increased gradually with changing LULC. By using the surface energy balance algorithm for land (SEBAL) with Landsat TM/ETM+ images and additional environmental data, the concomitant response of ET variations due to LUCC becomes lucid among three significantly correlated pairs including fractional vegetation cover (FVC), land surface temperature (LST) and soil heat flux. The dynamic linkages between ET and LULC were finally confirmed with such a pair-wise analysis.
