Abstract
This study concerned the sediment issue of the Yellow River basin. The responses of hydrological and sedimental processes to future climate change in two upland watersheds with different dominant landscapes were estimated. Four Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios with different radiative forcing levels were considered. The outputs of eleven Global Climate Models (GCMs) were used to represent the future climate status of the 2050s and 2070s, and an ensemble means was achieved to avoid uncertainty. The Long Ashton Research Station Weather Generator (LARS-WG) was employed to downscale the outputs of GCMs for future site-scale daily weather data estimations. The Generalized Watershed Loading Functions (GWLF) model was employed to model the streamflow and sediment yields under various scenarios and periods. The results showed that there would be generally hotter and wetter weather conditions in the future. Increased erosion and sediment yields could be found in the study area, with lesser increments in sediment in woodland than in cultivated field. The peak of sediment would appear in the 2050s, and integrated measures for sediment control should be implemented to reduce erosion and block delivery. The multi-model approach proposed in this study had reliable performance and could be applied in other similar areas with modest data conditions.
Highlights
The sediment substance in water bodies is of great importance for the aquatic ecosystem [1,2].Soil erosion and subsequent sediment transport is the main source of suspended sediment in riverine systems [3,4]
The sediment transport is driven by watershed hydrological processes, which are determined by the watershed land use cover and weather conditions for both precipitation and temperature
We found that both the statistics slightly declined in the verification period, but all the values of R2NS and r2 were higher than 0.75, which was in accordance with the general accuracy level of watershed model applications for monthly hydrological process estimation
Summary
The sediment substance in water bodies is of great importance for the aquatic ecosystem [1,2].Soil erosion and subsequent sediment transport is the main source of suspended sediment in riverine systems [3,4]. Soil erosion mainly depends on the basic conditions such as the amount and intensity of precipitation as well as the land use cover of the watershed. The sediment transport is driven by watershed hydrological processes, which are determined by the watershed land use cover and weather conditions for both precipitation and temperature. Temperature and precipitation changes in future climate change are expected to greatly affect the available water in the basin [5,6], so as to alter original soil loss and sediment delivery characteristics [7,8,9]. Many studies have evaluated the response of runoff and sediment loading to climate and land use/land cover change, based on historical data and/or various
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