scholarly journals Impacts of Climate Change and Land Use/Cover Change on Streamflow in Beichuan River Basin in Qinghai Province, China

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhe Liu ◽  
Lan Cuo ◽  
Qijiang Li ◽  
Xisheng Liu ◽  
Xuelian Ma ◽  
...  

Climate change (CC) and land use/cover change (LUCC) are the main drivers of streamflow change. In this study, the effects of CC and LUCC on streamflow regime as well as their spatial variability were examined by using the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) for the Beichuan River Basin in the northeast Tibetan Plateau. The results showed that CC increased annual and maximum streamflow in the upstream but decreased them in the downstream. CC also enhanced minimum streamflow in the whole river basin and advanced the occurrence of daily minimum streamflow. Temperature change exerted greater influence on streamflow regime than wind speed change did in most situations, but the impact of wind speed on streamflow reflected the characteristics of accumulative effects, which may require more attention in future, especially in large river basins. As for LUCC, cropland expansion and reservoir operation were the primary reasons for streamflow reduction. Cropland expansion contributed more to annual mean streamflow change, whereas reservoir operation greatly altered monthly streamflow pattern and extreme streamflow. Reservoir regulation also postponed the timing of minimum streamflow and extended durations of average, high, and low streamflow. Spatially, CC and LUCC played predominant roles in the upstream and the downstream, respectively.

Hydrology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kinati Chimdessa ◽  
Shoeb Quraishi ◽  
Asfaw Kebede ◽  
Tena Alamirew

In the Didessa river basin, which is found in Ethiopia, the human population number is increasing at an alarming rate. The conversion of forests, shrub and grasslands into cropland has increased in parallel with the population increase. The land use/land cover change (LULCC) that has been undertaken in the river basin combined with climate change may have affected the Didessa river flow and soil loss. Therefore, this study was designed to assess the impact of LULCC on the Didessa river flow and soil loss under historical and future climates. Land use/land cover (LULC) of the years 1986, 2001 and 2015 were independently combined with the historical climate to assess their individual impacts on river flow and soil loss. Further, the impact of future climates under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) scenarios on river flow and soil loss was assessed by combining the pathways with the 2015 LULC. A physically based Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT2012) model in the ArcGIS 10.4.1 interface was used to realize the purpose. Results of the study revealed that LULCC that occurred between 1986 and 2015 resulted in increased average sediment yield by 20.9 t ha−1 yr−1. Climate change under RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 combined with 2015 LULC increased annual average soil losses by 31.3, 50.9 and 83.5 t ha−1 yr−1 compared with the 2015 LULC under historical climate data. It was also found that 13.4%, 47.1% and 87.0% of the total area may experience high soil loss under RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, respectively. Annual soil losses of five top-priority sub catchments range from 62.8 to 57.7 per hectare. Nash Stuncliffe Simulation efficiency (NSE) and R2 values during model calibration and validation indicated good agreement between observed and simulated values both for flow and sediment yield.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 3277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Senent-Aparicio ◽  
Sitian Liu ◽  
Julio Pérez-Sánchez ◽  
Adrián López-Ballesteros ◽  
Patricia Jimeno-Sáez

Climate change and the land-use and land-cover changes (LULC) resulting from anthropic activity are important factors in the degradation of an ecosystem and in the availability of a basin’s water resources. To know how these activities affect the quantity of the water resources of basins, such as the Segura River Basin, is of vital importance. In this work, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used for the study of the abovementioned impacts. The model was validated by obtaining a Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.88 and a percent bias (PBIAS) of 17.23%, indicating that SWAT accurately replicated monthly streamflow. Next, land-use maps for the years of 1956 and 2007 were used to establish a series of scenarios that allowed us to evaluate the effects of these activities on both joint and individual water resources. A reforestation plan applied in the basin during the 1970s caused that the forest area had almost doubled, whereas the agricultural areas and shrubland had been reduced by one-third. These modifications, together with the effect of climate change, have led to a decrease of 26.3% in the quantity of generated water resources, not only due to climate change but also due to the increase in forest area.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenchen Shi ◽  
Jinyan Zhan ◽  
Yongwei Yuan ◽  
Feng Wu ◽  
Zhihui Li

Ecosystem services are the benefit human populations derive directly and indirectly from the natural environment. They suffer from both the human intervention, like land use zoning change, and natural intervention, like the climate change. Under the background of climate change, regulation services of ecosystem could be strengthened under proper land use zoning policy to mitigate the climate change. In this paper, a case study was conducted in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin to assess the ecosystem services conservation zoning under the change of land use associated with climate variations. The research results show the spatial impact of land use zoning on ecosystem services in the study area which are significant reference for the spatial optimization of land use zoning in preserving the key ecosystem services to mitigate the climate change. The research contributes to the growing literature in finely characterizing the ecosystem services zones altered by land use change to alleviate the impact of climate change, as there is no such systematic ecosystem zoning method before.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 6423
Author(s):  
Lanhua Luo ◽  
Qing Zhou ◽  
Hong S. He ◽  
Liangxia Duan ◽  
Gaoling Zhang ◽  
...  

Quantitative assessment of the impact of land use and climate change on hydrological processes is of great importance to water resources planning and management. The main objective of this study was to quantitatively assess the response of runoff to land use and climate change in the Zhengshui River Basin of Southern China, a heavily used agricultural basin. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to simulate the river runoff for the Zhengshui River Basin. Specifically, a soil database was constructed based on field work and laboratory experiments as input data for the SWAT model. Following SWAT calibration, simulated results were compared with observed runoff data for the period 2006 to 2013. The Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency Coefficient (NSE) and the correlation coefficient (R2) for the comparisons were greater than 0.80, indicating close agreement. The calibrated models were applied to simulate monthly runoff in 1990 and 2010 for four scenarios with different land use and climate conditions. Climate change played a dominant role affecting runoff of this basin, with climate change decreasing simulated runoff by −100.22% in 2010 compared to that of 1990, land use change increasing runoff in this basin by 0.20% and the combination of climate change and land use change decreasing runoff by 60.8m3/s. The decrease of forestland area and the corresponding increase of developed land and cultivated land area led to the small increase in runoff associated with land use change. The influence of precipitation on runoff was greater than temperature. The soil database used to model runoff with the SWAT model for the basin was constructed using a combination of field investigation and laboratory experiments, and simulations of runoff based on that new soil database more closely matched observations of runoff than simulations based on the generic Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD). This study may provide an important reference to guide management decisions for this and similar watersheds.


Author(s):  
J. S. Wu ◽  
Y. P. Li ◽  
J. Sun ◽  
P. P. Gao ◽  
G. H. Huang ◽  
...  

Abstract A multiple scenario-based ensemble prediction (MSEP) method is developed for exploring the impacts of climate and land-use changes on runoff in the Naryn River Basin. MSEP incorporates multiple global climate models, Cellular Automata–Markov and Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) within a general framework. MSEP can simultaneously analyze the effects of climate and land-use changes on runoff, as well as provide multiple climate and land-use scenarios to reflect the associated uncertainties in runoff simulation and prediction. Totally 96 scenarios are considered to analyze the trend and range of future runoff. Ensemble prediction results reveal that (i) climate change plays a leading role in runoff variation; (ii) compared to the baseline values, peak flow would increase 36.6% and low flow would reduce 36.8% by the 2080s, which would result in flooding and drought risks in the future and (iii) every additional hectare of arable land would increase the water deficit by an average of 10.9 × 103 m3, implying that the arable land should be carefully expanded in the future. Results suggest that, to mitigate the impact of climate change, the rational control of arable land and the active promotion of irrigation efficiency are beneficial for water resources management and ecological environmental recovery.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daeha Kim ◽  
Jong Ahn Chun ◽  
Si-Jung Choi

Abstract. Climate change is a global stressor that can undermine water management policies developed under the assumption of stationary climate, necessitating robust solutions to reducing the risk of system failures for uncertain future climates. While the response-surface-based assessments have provided convenience to explore responsive behaviours of expected system performance to climatic stresses, they were unable to predict the risk of system failures from individual climate projections. In this study, we proposed to use the logistic regressions for evaluating the probability of non-successive outcomes against pre-defined thresholds directly from climate projections, which may be more informative for decision making processes than the expected performances. As a case study, water supply and ecological reliabilities within a large river basin were assessed by combining the eco-engineering decision scaling framework and the logistic regressions. The impact assessment for the South Korean river basin showed that optimal water supply performance at the sub-basins were expected to be satisfactory for the upcoming 20 years of 2020–2039, while the human-demand-only operations could lower the ecological reliabilities. When considering ecological demands in water operations to reduce the ecological vulnerabilities, the stakeholders should accept increasing risks of unsatisfactory supply at the sub-basins with low demands. This study highlights that binary conversions of the performance metrics from the stress tests allow users to measure the risks of system failures varying across sub-components and standpoints with minimal computational costs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-131
Author(s):  
Loi Thi Pham ◽  
Khoi Nguyen Dao

Assessing water resources under the influence of environmental change have gained attentions of scientists. The objective of this study was to analyze the impacts of land use change and climate change on water resources in terms quantity and quality in the 3S basin in the period 1981–2008 by using hydrological modeling (SWAT model). The results showed that streamflow and water quality (TSS, T-N, and T-P) tend to increase under individual and combined effects of climate change and land use change. In addition, the impact of land use change on the flow was smaller than the climate change impact. However, water balance components and water quality were equally affected by two factors of climate change and land use change. In general, the results of this study could serve as a reference for water resource management and planning in the river basin.


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.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Santos ◽  
Felizardo. Rocha ◽  
Tiago Ramos ◽  
Lincoln Alves ◽  
Marcos Mateus ◽  
...  

This study assessed the impact of climate change on the hydrological regime of the Paraguaçu river basin, northeastern Brazil. Hydrological impact simulations were conducted using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) for 2020–2040. Precipitation and surface air temperature projections from two Regional Climate Models (Eta-HadGEM2-ES and Eta-MIROC5) based on IPCC5—RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios were used as inputs after first applying two bias correction methods (linear scaling—LS and distribution mapping—DM). The analysis of the impact of climate change on streamflow was done by comparing the maximum, average and reference (Q90) flows of the simulated and observed streamflow records. This study found that both methods were able to correct the climate projection bias, but the DM method showed larger distortion when applied to future scenarios. Climate projections from the Eta-HadGEM2-ES (LS) model showed significant reductions of mean monthly streamflow for all time periods under both RCP 4.5 and 8.5. The Eta-MIROC5 (LS) model showed a lower reduction of the simulated mean monthly streamflow under RCP 4.5 and a decrease of streamflow under RCP 8.5, similar to the Eta-HadGEM2-ES model results. The results of this study provide information for guiding future water resource management in the Paraguaçu River Basin and show that the bias correction algorithm also plays a significant role when assessing climate model estimates and their applicability to hydrological modelling.


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.


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