Abstract
Climate change and human activities altered the hydrologic systems and exerted global scale impacts on our environment with significant implications for water resources [1]. To secure a complete picture of future water resources, it will be necessary to consider climate change and variability, hydrology, water engineering, and human systems in an integrated framework [2]. Climate change can be characterized by the change of precipitation and temperature, and both precipitation pattern change and global warming are associated with the increase in frequency of flooding or drought and the decrease of low flows. With increasing water demand from domestic, agricultural, commercial, and industrial sectors, humans are increasingly becoming a significant component of the hydrologic cycle. Human activities have transformed hydrologic processes at spatial scales ranging from local to global as shown in figure 1. Human activities affecting watershed hydrology include land use change, dam construction and reservoir operation, groundwater pumping, surface water withdrawal, irrigation, return flow, and others e.g., Wang and Cai [3], Vogel [4]. The land use change impacts have been studied in many watersheds around the world. However, the fundamental role of human water use in the hydrologic cycle is not yet well understood [5].
Highlights
Climate change and human activities altered the hydrologic systems and exerted global scale impacts on our environment with significant implications for water resources [1]
Climate change can be characterized by the change of precipitation and temperature, and both precipitation pattern change and global warming are associated with the increase in frequency of flooding or drought and the decrease of low flows
Water withdrawal from surface water or groundwater is a major form of direct human interferences on the hydrologic cycle in many river basins, which can be revealed by historical streamflow record versus water use record
Summary
Climate change and human activities altered the hydrologic systems and exerted global scale impacts on our environment with significant implications for water resources [1]. Human activities affecting watershed hydrology include land use change, dam construction and reservoir operation, groundwater pumping, surface water withdrawal, irrigation, return flow, and others e.g., Wang and Cai [3], Vogel [4]. Data availability of human activities is limited and water use data (including domestic, industrial sectors, and irrigated agriculture) involve considerable uncertainties [5], which challenges the effectiveness of incorporating direct human interferences into hydrologic modeling. Natural hydrologic processes have been measured and simulated sophisticatedly by detailed models at different time and spatial scales, but data about the human aspects of water uses are not available [8]. The proposed observatory-related initiatives, such as Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) and Collaborative Large-Scale Engineering Analysis Network for Environmental Research (CLEANER), aim to, but are not limited to, data availability problem, especially for the human side [9]
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