scholarly journals The Variation Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Base Flow of the Hexi Inland Rivers

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 356
Author(s):  
Yuxin Lei ◽  
Xiaohui Jiang ◽  
Wenjie Geng ◽  
Jinyan Zhang ◽  
Huan Zhao ◽  
...  

The climate is becoming warmer and more humid in the inland area of northwestern China. In addition, human activities have changed the underlying surface of the river basin, and the instability of the runoff changes has intensified. As a component of river runoff, the base flow reflects the impacts of climate change and human activities. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out research on the change in the base flow and its influencing factors in the context of climate change and human activities. In this study, a base flow method suitable for the inland rivers in northwestern China was assessed, and the variation rules and influencing factors of the base flow were analyzed. The results reveal that since the 1980s, the base flow of the Hexi inland rivers has exhibited an increasing trend, and the growth rate has exhibited the following order: western > central > eastern. The Base Flow Index (the proportion of the base flow to the total runoff in a period) values are in the range of 0.45–0.65. Overall, the change in the base flow of the Hexi inland rivers is the result of the coupling of climate factors and land-use change. The influence of land-use change on the base flow of the Hexi inland rivers gradually weakens from east to west, except for the Xiying River, while the influence of climate change gradually increases. The contribution rates of land-use change to the base flow in the eastern, central, and western regions were 75%, 55%, and 27%. Temperature and precipitation are the main climate factors affecting the change in the base flow in the western and central regions, respectively.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Moschini ◽  
Iacopo Federico Ferrario ◽  
Barbara Hofmann

<p>Quantifying how land-use change affects hydrological components is a challenge in hydrological science. It is not yet clear how changes in land use relate to runoff extremes and why some catchments are more sensitive to land-use change than others. Identifying which areas are hydrologically more sensitive to land-use change can lead to better land-use planning, reduction of the impacts of extreme rainfall events and extended dry periods. In this study we aim to quantify how land-use change and climate change are affecting the hydrological response of  Vietnam’s basins. Over the past decades the country’s land use has shifted from forest to agriculture, with very high production of rice, coffee, tea, pepper and sugar cane.</p><p>We combine the historical, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 climate change scenarios developed for Vietnam, with two different land cover maps (from the years 1992 and 2017). The combined and separate effect of land use and climate change are assessed and the most sensitive to change areas are identified. The Variable infiltration Capacity (VIC) surface water and energy balance model applied here is a grid-based model that calculates evapotranspiration, runoff, base flow, soil moisture and other hydrological fluxes. Surface heterogeneity within VIC is represented by a tiled approach, whereby the surface of each grid-box comprises fractions of the different surface types. For each surface type of the grid-box, the energy and water balances are solved, and a weighted average is calculated from the individual surface fluxes for each grid-box. Hydrological fluxes were compared for each grid cell and basin to analyse the degree of difference between the scenarios.</p><p>Significant changes in future hydrologic fluxes arise under both climate change scenarios pointing towards a severe increase in hydrological extremes. The changes in all the examined hydrological components are greater in the combined land-use and climate change experiments.</p>


Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1775 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingyi Bu ◽  
Chunxia Lu ◽  
Jun Niu ◽  
Yanchun Gao

Juma River, located in the Midwest of the Haihe River basin, is an important source of water supply to Beijing and Hebei. Over the past decades, the region has been seriously threatened by water shortages owing to complex climate conditions and intensive human activities. This study investigated the runoff characteristics of the Juma River by employing the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and stochastic methods for the period of 1961–2013. Accordingly, the runoff changes attributed to the climate variation and different types of anthropogenic activities (land use change and direct human intervention) were estimated, respectively, in conjunction with the improved quantitative response analysis. The results indicated that the annual runoff of both Zijingguan station and Zhangfang station has decreased significantly at the 0.001 significance level, and reduction rates were −0.054 billion m3 and −0.10 billion m3, respectively. Moreover, the persistency of this trend has been shown for decades (Hurst coefficient > 0.50). The SWAT model was calibrated and validated during the baseline period of 1961–1978. Significant rising temperatures and declining precipitation were the main reasons for runoff reduction, especially during the two periods of 1998–2002 and 2003–2008. Additionally, water withdrawal of Wuyi canal aggravated the runoff reduction and water scarcity conditions in the region. After 2009, the effects of direct human intervention exceeded those of climate change. However, the impact of land use change can be seen as negligible during the study period. Climate change had a greater effect on runoff reduction in winter, while the impact of human activities was more dramatic in summer.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 11521-11549 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Q. Dong ◽  
G. X. Zhang ◽  
Y. J. Xu

Abstract. The Nenjiang River Basin (NRB) is an important grain-production region with abundant wetlands in Northeast China. Climate change and anthropogenic activities have dramatically altered the spatial and temporal distribution of regional stream discharge and water resources, which poses a serious threat to wetland ecosystems and sustainable agriculture. In this study, we analyzed 55-yr (1956–2010) rainfall and runoff patterns in the river basin to quantitatively evaluate the impact of human activities on regional hydrology. The long-term hydrologic series were divided into two periods: period I (1956–1974), during which minimum land use change occurred, and period II (1975–2010), during which land use change intensified. Kendall's rank correlation test, non-parametric Pettitt test and precipitation-runoff double cumulative curve (DCC) methods were utilized to identify the trends and thresholds of the annual runoff in the upstream, midstream, and downstream basin areas. Our results showed that the runoff in the NRB has continuously declined in the past 55 yr, and that the effects of climate change and human activities on the runoff reduction varied in the upstream, midstream and downstream area over different time scales. For the entire study period, climate change has been the dominant factor, accounting for 69.6–80.3% of the reduction in the total basin runoff. However, the impact of human activities has been increasing from 19.7% during the 1950s–1970s to 30.4% in the present time. Spatially, the runoff reduction became higher from the upstream to the downstream areas, revealing an increasing threat of water availability to the large wetland ecosystem in the lower river basin. Furthermore, the sustainable development of irrigated agriculture in the NRB will be a threat to the survival of the wetlands.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 3525
Author(s):  
Fu-hong Liu ◽  
Chong-Yu Xu ◽  
Xiao-xia Yang ◽  
Xu-chun Ye

Knowledge of vegetation dynamics in relation to climatic changes and human activities is essential for addressing the terrestrial carbon cycle in the context of global warming. Scientific detection and quantitative attribution of vegetation dynamic changes in different climatic zones and human activities are the focus and challenge of the relevant research. Taking the Poyang Lake basin as the research area, this study aimed to reveal how climate and land use drive changes in net primary productivity (NPP) in the subtropical humid basin. Change patterns of vegetation NPP and their relationships with meteorological factors across the basin were first investigated based on the estimation of 18 year (2000–2017 year) NPP by using a typical light energy utilization model, the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) model. Quantitative analysis was then conducted to explicitly distinguish the driving effects of climate change and land-use change on NPP dynamics in two different periods. Results show that annual NPP and total production (TP) of the Poyang Lake basin increased significantly from 2000 to 2017. During this period, land-use change in the basin was driven by the process of urbanization expansion and the efforts of ecological protection. Climatically, the temperature is the major influencing climatic factor in determining vegetation productivity in the subtropical humid basin, followed by precipitation and solar radiation. In addition, our investigation also revealed that with comparison to the period of 2000s, the increased TP of the Poyang Lake basin due to climate change in 2010s was much bigger than the decreased TP due to land-use change. However, in the areas where the land-use change occurred, the decreased TP was mainly attributed to the impact of land-use change, even though climate change showed a positive effect of increasing productivity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Rolinski ◽  
Alexander V. Prishchepov ◽  
Georg Guggenberger ◽  
Norbert Bischoff ◽  
Irina Kurganova ◽  
...  

AbstractChanges in land use and climate are the main drivers of change in soil organic matter contents. We investigated the impact of the largest policy-induced land conversion to arable land, the Virgin Lands Campaign (VLC), from 1954 to 1963, of the massive cropland abandonment after 1990 and of climate change on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan. We simulated carbon budgets from the pre-VLC period (1900) until 2100 using a dynamic vegetation model to assess the impacts of observed land-use change as well as future climate and land-use change scenarios. The simulations suggest for the entire VLC region (266 million hectares) that the historic cropland expansion resulted in emissions of 1.6⋅ 1015 g (= 1.6 Pg) carbon between 1950 and 1965 compared to 0.6 Pg in a scenario without the expansion. From 1990 to 2100, climate change alone is projected to cause emissions of about 1.8 (± 1.1) Pg carbon. Hypothetical recultivation of the cropland that has been abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union until 2050 may cause emissions of 3.5 (± 0.9) Pg carbon until 2100, whereas the abandonment of all cropland until 2050 would lead to sequestration of 1.8 (± 1.2) Pg carbon. For the climate scenarios based on SRES (Special Report on Emission Scenarios) emission pathways, SOC declined only moderately for constant land use but substantially with further cropland expansion. The variation of SOC in response to the climate scenarios was smaller than that in response to the land-use scenarios. This suggests that the effects of land-use change on SOC dynamics may become as relevant as those of future climate change in the Eurasian steppes.


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