Digital Yellow River Model

Abstract

Soil erosion is one of the key concerns in land use management for the Loess Plateau of the Yellow River, where serious soil loss is the root cause of environmental and ecological degradation of the basin. In this paper, a physically-based, distributed-parameter, and continuous erosion prediction model at the river basin scale was developed with the aim of assisting in developing better land use management strategies. The framework, the major supporting techniques, and the typical erosion processes are described. The physical processes of sediment yield and transport in the Loess Plateau are divided into three sub-processes, including the runoff and sediment yield on hillslopes, gravitational erosion in gullies, and hyperconcentrated flow routing in channels. For each sub-process, a physically-based simulation model was developed and embedded into the whole model system. The model system was applied to simulate the runoff and sediment yield in several typical years in the coarse sediment source area of the Loess Plateau, and the simulated results were in reasonably good agreement with the measured values.