Identification of the Impacts of Climate Changes and Human Activities on Runoff in the Jinsha River Basin, China

Xiaowan Liu,Zongxue Xu,Dingzhi Peng

doi:10.1155/2017/4631831

Abstract

Quantifying the impacts of climate changes and human activities on runoff has received extensive attention, especially for the regions with significant elevation difference. The contributions of climate changes and human activities to runoff were analyzed using rainfall-runoff relationship, double mass curve, slope variation, and water balance method during 1961–2010 at the Jinsha River basin, China. Results indicate that runoff at upstream and runoff at midstream are both dominated by climate changes, and the contributions of climate changes to runoff are 63%~72% and 53%~68%, respectively. At downstream, climate changes account for only 13%~18%, and runoff is mainly controlled by human activities, contributing 82%~87%. The availability and stability of results were compared and analyzed in the four methods. Results in slope variation, double mass curve, and water balance method except rainfall-runoff relationship method are of good agreement. And the rainfall-runoff relationship, double mass curve, and slope variation method are all of great stability. The four methods and availability evaluation of them could provide a reference to quantification in the contributions of climate changes and human activities to runoff at similar basins in the future.

Highlights

Flood and drought are increasing with frequency, which can primarily be attributed to climate changes and human activities [1,2,3]
Identifying the change point in streamflow, precipitation, actual and potential evapotranspiration, and their cumulative time series at up, mid, and downstream is the first step for the four quantitative methods
Results showed that the contributions of precipitation to runoff at upstream and midstream were 46%

Summary

Introduction

Flood and drought are increasing with frequency, which can primarily be attributed to climate changes and human activities [1,2,3]. Exploring runoff responses to climate changes and human activities has become a hot topic due to dramatic global warming and intensive urbanization. The great uncertainties of human activities and the scarcity of available data determine the difficulty in understanding runoff responses to climate changes and human activities [9, 10]. An increasing number of studies have investigated the contributions of climate changes and human activities to runoff using hydrological modeling and statistical methods [11,12,13,14,15,16]. Hydrological modeling is followed by calibrating the model parameters on the basis of previous available field data and later projecting runoff variations under the assumption of different future scenarios. Studies in high elevation-difference regions and comparative analysis of methods are still lacking [24]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion