Abstract
Abstract. As China's economy booms, increasing water use has significantly affected hydro-geomorphic processes and thus the ecology of surface waters. A large variety of hydrological changes arising from human activities such as reservoir construction and management, water abstraction, water diversion and agricultural land expansion have been sustained throughout China. Using the global scale hydrological and water use model WaterGAP, natural and anthropogenically altered flow conditions are calculated, taking into account flow alterations due to human water consumption and 580 large reservoirs. The impacts resulting from water consumption and reservoirs have been analyzed separately. A modified "Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration" approach is used to describe the human pressures on aquatic ecosystems due to anthropogenic alterations in river flow regimes. The changes in long-term average river discharge, average monthly mean discharge and coefficients of variation of monthly river discharges under natural and impacted conditions are compared and analyzed. The indicators show very significant alterations of natural river flow regimes in a large part of northern China and only minor alterations in most of southern China. The detected large alterations in long-term average river discharge, the seasonality of flows and the inter-annual variability in the northern half of China are very likely to have caused significant ecological impacts.
Highlights
In March 1994, the government of China announced its plans for sustainable development in a White Paper entitled “China’s Strategy for Population, Environment and Development in the 21st Century” (Government of China, 1994).The paper indicates that it is urgent to protect the natural functions of water resources in relation to hydrology, biology and chemistry, and adjust human activities to within the limits of nature and implement the sustainable development impact assessment system in the decision-making for water resource management (Chapter 14)
In order to analyze the impacts of water consumption and reservoirs separately, WaterGAP was run by including consumption only but no reservoirs (USE) and by including only reservoirs but no human water consumption (RES)
In the central Songhuajiang, lower Yellow River and northeastern part of Yangtze River basin, natural flow is reduced by 20–50%
Summary
The paper indicates that it is urgent to protect the natural functions of water resources in relation to hydrology, biology and chemistry, and adjust human activities to within the limits of nature and implement the sustainable development impact assessment system in the decision-making for water resource management (Chapter 14). To fulfill these goals, an assessment of hydrological changes due to human impacts that integrates ecological aspects is needed for all of China. Two sets of flow time series representing natural and altered conditions at the same site are compared using 32 indicators spanning the five characteristics mentioned above
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