Human impacts on the Changjiang (Yangtze) River basin, China, with special reference to the impacts on the dry season water discharges into the sea

Abstract

The annual mean discharge from the upper Changjiang (Yangtze) basin has shown a significant decreasing trend since the end of the 19th century. Since the 1970s, the monthly mean discharge to the sea has also shown a dramatic decrease during dry seasons. This paper examines the human impacts on the major hydrological processes in the Changjiang River basin, with a special focus on their influence on the discharge from the drainage basin to the sea during the dry season. Climatic warming has been obvious since the 1960s in the headwater area, resulting a continuous retreat of glaciers, while the increased evaporation is responsible for the dropping of lake water levels and decrease in water area. Such a trend continuing into the coming decades will significantly change the seasonal hydrological processes, especially the dry-season discharges from the upper basin. The decreasing vegetation cover and the increasing reservoir volume capacity also impacted on the water discharge over the past decades, although in different ways. The possible impacts of the Three Gorges Dam on the monthly variation of water discharge to the sea are discussed with special emphasis. In the middle basin discussions are focused on the effect of decreasing lake area, of increasing reservoir capacity, and of irrigated agriculture on the temporal changes of water discharge since the 1950s. The human impacts on water discharge from the lower basin to the sea are mostly attributed to water transfer to both tributary and neighboring drainage basins by a large number of electric pumping stations and sluices. The total water transferring capacity is more than 5000 m 3/s along the lower river. Studies indicate that in a dry season the water discharge to the sea is greatly reduced and results in strong saltwater intrusion in the estuary.