Impacts of Climate and Land-Use Changes on Hydrological Processes of the Source Region of Yellow River, China

Abstract

Climate variability and land-use change are key factors altering the hydrology of a river basin, which are strongly linked to the availability of water resources and the sustainability of the local ecosystem. This study investigated the combined and individual impacts of land-use changes (LUCs) and climate change (CC) on the hydrological processes in subbasins of the Source Region of the Yellow River (SRYR) through statistical methods and hydrological modeling based on two land-use maps for the period 1990 and 2010, and two climate periods, i.e., 1976–1995 and 1996–2014. The results revealed that the climate is anticipated to be warmer and wetter. Land-use changes were dominated by decreases in sparse grassland. However, the transformation of land-use changes varied spatially within sub-basins. The combined impacts of climate and land-use changes are more noticeable in the Maqu subbasin, where the decrease in runoff reached 18% (32.2 mm) and increase in evapotranspiration (ET) reached 10.4% (34.1 mm), followed by the Tangnaihai and Jimai subbasins. The changes in runoff and ET caused by LUC seemed to be adequate by comparison, and presented a 15.1–19.8% decline in runoff and 21.3–28% increase in ET relative to the totals. Overall, climate change has more influence on hydrological processes in all subbasins of the SRYR than LUC. It is, therefore, considered that the response to changes in hydrological processes in a subbasin can be attributed to changes in individual climate parameters and land-use classes.