scholarly journals Attribution Analysis of Hydrological Drought Risk Under Climate Change and Human Activities: A Case Study on Kuye River Basin in China

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1958 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang ◽  
Wang ◽  
Zhou

This study conducted quantitative diagnosis on the impact of climate change and human activities on drought risk. Taking the Kuye river basin (KRB) in China as the research area, we used variation point diagnosis, simulation of precipitation and runoff, drought risk assessment, and attribution quantification. The results show that: (1) the annual runoff sequence of KRB changed significantly after 1979, which was consistent with the introduction of large-scale coal mining; (2) under the same drought recurrence period, the drought duration and severity in the human activity stage were significantly worse than in the natural and simulation stages, indicating that human activities changed the drought risk in this area; and (3) human activities had little impact on drought severity in the short duration and low recurrence period, but had a greater impact in the long duration and high recurrence period. These results provide scientific guidance for the management, prevention, and resistance of drought; and guarantee sustainable economic and social development in the KRB.

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingcai Wang ◽  
Hui Lin ◽  
Jinbai Huang ◽  
Chenjuan Jiang ◽  
Yangyang Xie ◽  
...  

Huai River Basin (HRB) is an important food and industrial production area and a frequently drought-affected basin in eastern China. It is necessary to consider the future drought development for reducing the impact of drought disasters. Three global circulation models (GCMs) from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5), such as CNRM-CM5 (CNR), HadGEM2-ES (Had) and MIROC5 (MIR), were used to assessment the future drought conditions under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) scenarios, namely, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), statistical method, Mann-Kendall test, and run theory were carried out to study the variations of drought tendency, frequency, and characteristics and their responses to climate change. The research showed that the three CMIP5 models differ in describing the future seasonal and annual variations of precipitation and temperature in the basin and thus lead to the differences in describing drought trends, frequency, and drought characteristics, such as drought severity, drought duration, and drought intensity. However, the drought trend, frequency, and characteristics in the future are more serious than the history. The drought frequency and characteristics tend to be strengthened under the scenario of high concentration of RCP8.5, and the drought trend is larger than that of low concentration of RCP4.5. The lower precipitation and the higher temperature are the main factors affecting the occurrence of drought. All three CMIP5 models show that precipitation would increase in the future, but it could not offset the evapotranspiration loss caused by significant temperature rise. The serious risk of drought in the future is still higher. Considering the uncertainty of climate models for simulation and prediction, attention should be paid to distinguish the effects of different models in the future drought assessment.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 2390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sun ◽  
Zhang ◽  
Yao ◽  
Wen

: Hydrological droughts were characterized using the run-length theory and the AIC (Akaike information criterion) techniques were accepted to evaluate the modeling performance of nine probability functions. In addition, the copula functions were used to describe joint probability behaviors of drought duration and drought severity for the major tributaries of the Huai River Basin (HRB) which is located in the transitional zone between humid and semi-humid climates. The results indicated that: (1) the frequency of hydrological droughts in the upper HRB is higher than that in the central HRB, while the duration of the hydrological drought is in reverse spatial pattern. The drought frequency across the Shiguan River along the south bank of the HRB is higher than the other two tributaries; (2) generalized Pareto distribution is the appropriate distribution function with the best performance in modelling the drought duration over the HRB; while the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution can effectively describe the probabilistic properties of the drought severity. Joe copula and Tawn copula functions are the best choices and were used in this study. Given return periods of droughts of <30 years, the droughts in the upper HRB are the longest, and the shortest are in the central HRB; (3) the frequency of droughts along the mainstream of the HRB is higher than tributaries of the HRB. However, concurrence probability of droughts along the mainstream of the HRB is lower than the tributaries of the HRB. The drought resistance capacity of HRB has been significantly improved, effectively reducing the impact of hydrological drought on crops after 2010.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Rickards ◽  
Thomas Thomas ◽  
Alexandra Kaelin ◽  
Helen Houghton-Carr ◽  
Sharad K. Jain ◽  
...  

The Narmada river basin is a highly regulated catchment in central India, supporting a population of over 16 million people. In such extensively modified hydrological systems, the influence of anthropogenic alterations is often underrepresented or excluded entirely by large-scale hydrological models. The Global Water Availability Assessment (GWAVA) model is applied to the Upper Narmada, with all major dams, water abstractions and irrigation command areas included, which allows for the development of a holistic methodology for the assessment of water resources in the basin. The model is driven with 17 Global Circulation Models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) ensemble to assess the impact of climate change on water resources in the basin for the period 2031–2060. The study finds that the hydrological regime within the basin is likely to intensify over the next half-century as a result of future climate change, causing long-term increases in monsoon season flow across the Upper Narmada. Climate is expected to have little impact on dry season flows, in comparison to water demand intensification over the same period, which may lead to increased water stress in parts of the basin.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 2568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meng Bai ◽  
Bing Shen ◽  
Xiaoyu Song ◽  
Shuhong Mo ◽  
Lingmei Huang ◽  
...  

Understanding the spatial-temporal dynamics of evapotranspiration in relation to climate change and human activities is crucial for the sustainability of water resources and ecosystem security, especially in regions strongly influenced by human impact. In this study, a process-based evapotranspiration (ET) model in conjunction with the Global Land Surface Satellite (GLASS) LAI dataset was used to characterize the spatial-temporal pattern of evapotranspiration from 1982 to 2016 over the Gan River basin (GRB), the largest sub-basin of the Poyang Lake catchment, China. The results showed that the actual annual ET (ETa) weakly increased with an annual trend of 0.88 mm year−2 from 1982 to 2016 over the GRB, along with a slight decline in annual potential ET (ETp). On an ecosystem scale; however, only the evergreen broadleaved forest and cropland presented a positive ETa trend, while the rest of the ecosystems demonstrated negative trends of ETa. Both correlation analysis and sensitivity analysis revealed a close relationship between ETa inter-annual variability and energy availability. Attribution analysis illustrated that contributions of climate change and vegetation greening on the ETa trend were −0.48 mm year−2 and 1.36 mm year−2, respectively. Climate change had a negative impact on the ETa trend over the GRB. However, the negative effects have been offset by the positive effects of vegetation greening, which mainly resulted from the large-scale revegetation in forestland and agricultural practices in cropland. It is concluded that large-scale afforestation and agricultural management were the main drivers of the long-term evolution of water consumption over the GRB. This study can improve our understanding of the interactive effects of climate change and human activities on the long-term evolution of water cycles.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 3501
Author(s):  
Hao Liu ◽  
Zheng Wang ◽  
Guangxing Ji ◽  
Yanlin Yue

Based on the Lancang River Basin (LRB) hydro–meteorological data from 1961 to 2015, this study uses the Mann–Kendall trend test and mutation test to analyze the trend of hydro–meteorological variables, as well as which year the runoff series changes, respectively. We applied the Choudhury–Yang equation to calculate the climate and catchment landscape elasticity of runoff. Then we quantified the impact of climate change and human activities on runoff change. The results show that: (1) the mean annual precipitation (P) in LRB showed an insignificant decline, the annual potential evapotranspiration (E0) showed a significant increase, and the runoff depth (R) showed a significant decrease; (2) the abrupt change of the R occurred in 2005. Both the climate and catchment landscape elasticity of runoff increased, which means that the hydrological process of LRB became more sensitive to climate changes and human activities; (3) compared with the base period (1961–2004), the reduction of P was the leading cause of runoff reduction, with a contribution of 45.64%. The contribution of E0 and human activities to runoff changes are 13.91% and 40.45%, respectively.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2039
Author(s):  
Huijuan Bo ◽  
Xiaohua Dong ◽  
Zhonghua Li ◽  
Xiaonong Hu ◽  
Gebrehiwet Reta ◽  
...  

Natural hydrological processes have been changed under the combined influences of climate change and intensive human activities in the Huangbaihe River Basin, where large-scale phosphate mining has been taking place. Therefore, evaluating the impact of climate change and intensive human activities on runoff variation and detecting the main driving factor leading to the variation are important for more efficient water resource management and more sustainable development of the regional economy. Despite numerous studies having been performed on this topic, little research focused on the impact of mining on runoff variation. The non-parametric Mann-Kendall (MK) trend test and accumulative anomaly methods were applied to identifying basic trends and change points of the hydro-meteorological elements over the period from 1978 to 2016. Then, the Soil Water and Assessment Tool (SWAT) and the Slope Changing Ratio of Accumulative Quantity (SCRAQ) were both used to quantify the contributions of climate change and anthropogenic activities on runoff variation. In this step, the runoff data were restored to their natural state before the construction of Xuanmiaoguan (XMG) dam. Due to the lack of locally observed evapotranspiration data, Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model and an empirical equation applied to obtain the evapotranspiration data. The results revealed that the change points are in 1985 and 2006. Therefore, the total period was divided into three periods, that is, the baseline period Ta (1978–1984), change period Tb (1985–2005) and change period Tc (2006–2016). Compared with the baseline period Ta, climate change dominates the runoff variation in the period Tb and is responsible for 60.5 and 74.4% of runoff variation, while human activities contribute the most to runoff variation for the period Tc (79.3 and 86.1%). Furthermore, an analysis of the underlying mechanism of underground phosphate mining indicates that mining can affect overland flow and baseflow simultaneously. This study can provide some information in determining the contributions of climate change and human activities in intensive phosphate mined basins and areas lack of evapotranspiration data.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 1679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guo ◽  
Mu ◽  
Hu ◽  
Gao ◽  
Zhang ◽  
...  

National large-scale soil and water conservation controls on the Gangjiang River basin have been documented, but the effect of governance on regional watershed hydrology and how the main driving factors act have not been systematically studied yet. To do this, this study evaluated changing trends and detected transition years for both streamflow and sediment discharge using long-term historical records at seven hydrological stations in the Ganjiang River basin over the past 50 years. The double mass curve (DMC) method was used to quantify the effects of both climate change and human activities on hydrological regime shifts. The results showed that the distributions of precipitation, streamflow, and sediment discharge within a year are extremely uneven and mainly concentrated in the flood season of Jiangxi Province. None of the stations showed significant trends over time for either annual precipitation or streamflow, while the annual sediment discharge at most stations decreased significantly over time. The estimation of sediment discharge via DMC indicated that after the transition years, there were rapid reductions in sediment discharge at all hydrological stations, and the average decline degree of midstream and downstream were much larger than that of upstream. Human activities, especially the increase of vegetation cover and construction of large and medium-sized reservoirs, provided a significantly greater contribution to the reduction of sediment discharge than did precipitation changes. As a case study of river evolution under global change environment, this study could provide scientific basis for the control of soil erosion and the management of water resources in Ganjiang River, as well as for the related research of Poyang Lake and the Yangtze River basin of China.


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.


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