Impacts of climate variability and human activity on streamflow decrease in a sediment concentrated region in the Middle Yellow River

The Kuye River is the primary tributary located in the sediment concentrated regions in the Middle Yellow River in China. Significant decrease in streamflow has been observed in the Kuye River. The non-parametric Mann–Kendall test was applied to detect the change in annual streamflow for the period of 1960 to 2006. Mean annual streamflow in the Kuye River was 84.9 mm from 1960 to 1979 (period I), while it decreased to 58.2 mm from 1980 to 1998 (period II) and 20.5 mm from 1999 to 2006 (period III), respectively. The climate elasticity method and the hydrological modeling method were individually employed to assess the impact of climate variability and human activities on the decrease in streamflow. The results showed that climate variability was responsible for 29.6 and 27.1 % of the streamflow decrease from the climate elasticity method and the hydrological modeling method, respectively; while human activities accounted for 70.4 and 72.9 % of the streamflow decrease in period II. In period III, climate variability contributed 40.9 and 39.3 % of the streamflow decrease from the climate elasticity method and the hydrological modeling method, respectively; while human activities accounted for 59.1 and 60.7 % of the streamflow decrease. Therefore, human activities were the main reason of the streamflow decrease. Soil conservation measures (planting trees, improving pastures, building terraces and sediment-trapping dams) and coal mining led to the streamflow reduction in the Kuye River.

[1]  J. Vaze,et al.  Estimating climate change impact on runoff across southeast Australia: Method, results, and implications of the modeling method , 2009 .

[2]  Lu Zhang,et al.  Response of mean annual evapotranspiration to vegetation changes at catchment scale , 2001 .

[3]  Lu Zhang,et al.  Responses of streamflow to changes in climate and land use/cover in the Loess Plateau, China , 2008 .

[4]  Lu Zhang,et al.  Hydrological responses to conservation practices in a catchment of the Loess Plateau, China , 2004 .

[5]  Vivek K. Arora,et al.  The use of the aridity index to assess climate change effect on annual runoff , 2002 .

[6]  Chong-Yu Xu,et al.  Climate changes and their impacts on water resources in the arid regions: a case study of the Tarim River basin, China , 2010 .

[7]  Dingbao Wang,et al.  Quantifying the relative contribution of the climate and direct human impacts on mean annual streamflow in the contiguous United States , 2011 .

[8]  Jiongxin Xu.  Temporal variation of river flow renewability in the middle Yellow River and the influencing factors , 2005 .

[9]  V. Singh,et al.  Application and testing of the simple rainfall-runoff model SIMHYD , 2002 .

[10]  Recent tendency of sediment reduction in the middle Yellow River and some countermeasures , 2004 .

[11]  Michael Bruen,et al.  A simple model for estimating the sensitivity of runoff to long-term changes in precipitation without a change in vegetation , 1999 .

[12]  A. Borthwick,et al.  Recent changes of water discharge and sediment load in the Yellow River basin, China , 2010 .

[13]  Hongxing Zheng,et al.  Changes in components of the hydrological cycle in the Yellow River basin during the second half of the 20th century , 2004 .

[14]  Jun Xia,et al.  Quantification of effects of climate variations and human activities on runoff by a monthly water balance model: A case study of the Chaobai River basin in northern China , 2009 .

[15]  L. S. Pereira,et al.  Crop evapotranspiration : guidelines for computing crop water requirements , 1998 .

[16]  P. E. Waggoner,et al.  From climate to flow. , 1990 .

[17]  J. Xia,et al.  Dramatic decrease in streamflow from the headwater source in the central route of China's water diversion project: Climatic variation or human influence? , 2012 .

[18]  Yongqiang Zhang,et al.  Separating effects of vegetation change and climate variability using hydrological modelling and sensitivity-based approaches , 2012 .

[19]  C. Miao,et al.  Variation of Natural Streamflow since 1470 in the Middle Yellow River, China , 2009, International journal of environmental research and public health.

[20]  H. B. Mann.  Nonparametric Tests Against Trend , 1945 .

[21]  M. I. Budyko.  Evaporation under natural conditions , 1963 .

[22]  Javier Tomasella,et al.  Trends in streamflow and rainfall in tropical South America : Amazonia, eastern Brazil, and northwestern Peru , 1998 .

[23]  Helge Bormann,et al.  Simulated impact of past and possible future land use changes on the hydrological response of the Northern German lowland 'Hunte' catchment. , 2010 .

[24]  Richard Stone,et al.  A Simple Model , 1951 .

[25]  Jin Teng,et al.  Future climate and runoff projections across New South Wales, Australia: results and practical applications , 2011 .

[26]  Edward Hanna,et al.  Increased Runoff from Melt from the Greenland Ice Sheet: A Response to Global Warming , 2008 .

[27]  Peter Molnar,et al.  Streamflow trends in Switzerland , 2005 .

[28]  K. Eckhardt,et al.  Hydrologic Response to land use changes on the catchment scale , 2001 .

[29]  Sheng Yue,et al.  Applicability of prewhitening to eliminate the influence of serial correlation on the Mann‐Kendall test , 2002 .

[30]  M. H. Costa,et al.  Effects of large-scale changes in land cover on the discharge of the Tocantins River, Southeastern Amazonia , 2003 .

[31]  Quansheng Ge,et al.  Winter half-year temperature reconstruction for the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and Yangtze River, China, during the past 2000 years , 2003 .

[32]  T. McVicar,et al.  Analysis of the impact of conservation measures on stream flow regime in catchments of the Loess Plateau, China , 2007 .

[33]  K. Potter.  Hydrological impacts of changing land management practices in a moderate‐sized agricultural catchment , 1991 .

[34]  J. Nash,et al.  River flow forecasting through conceptual models part I — A discussion of principles☆ , 1970 .

[35]  Ali Sarhadi,et al.  Rainfall trends analysis of Iran in the last half of the twentieth century , 2009 .

[36]  He Hongmou.  The Influence of Coal Mining on Water Resources in the Kuye River Basin , 2010 .

[37]  Joseph Park,et al.  Climate change and its implications for water resources management in south Florida , 2011 .

[38]  Mark D. Tomer,et al.  A simple approach to distinguish land-use and climate-change effects on watershed hydrology , 2009 .

[39]  Qiang Liu,et al.  Spatial and temporal variability of annual precipitation during 1961-2006 in Yellow River Basin, China , 2008 .

[40]  Paul C.D. Milly,et al.  Macroscale water fluxes 2. Water and energy supply control of their interannual variability , 2002 .

[41]  Yongqiang Zhang,et al.  Relative merits of different methods for runoff predictions in ungauged catchments , 2009 .

[42]  Guoqing Wang,et al.  Runoff reduction due to environmental changes in the Sanchuanhe river basin , 2008 .