Investigating Hydrological Variability in the Wuding River Basin: Implications for Water Resources Management under the Water–Human-Coupled Environment

Chiheng Dang,Yinghao Yu,Vijay P Singh,Hongbo Zhang,Shuting Shao

doi:10.3390/w13020184

Abstract

Understanding and quantifying changes in hydrological systems due to human interference are critical for the implementation of adaptive management of global water resources in the changing environment. To explore the implications of hydrological variations for water resources management, the Wuding River Basin (WRB) in the Loess Plateau, China, was selected as a case study. Based on the Budyko-type equation with a time-varying parameter n, a human-induced water–energy balance (HWEB) model was proposed to investigate the hydrological variability in the WRB. The investigation showed that runoff continuously reduced by 0.424 mm/a during 1975–2010, with weakly reducing precipitation and increasing groundwater exploitation causing a decrease in groundwater storage at a rate of 1.07 mm/a, and actual evapotranspiration accounting for more than 90% of precipitation having an insignificantly decreasing trend with a rate of 0.53 mm/a under climate change (decrease) and human impact (increase). Attribution analysis indicated that human-induced underlying surface condition change played a dominant role in runoff reduction by driving an increase in actual evapotranspiration, and that mainly impacted the overall decrease in runoff compounded by climate change during the entire period. It is suggested that reducing the watershed evapotranspiration and controlling groundwater exploitation should receive greater attention in future basin management.

Highlights

The global climate system has been undergoing a significant change in recent years, which, together with large-scale anthropogenic activities, is altering the hydrologic cycle, making the climate-driven hydrologic cycle more of a human–climate-driven hydrologic cycle [1]
The data covering the period 1975–2010 observed meteorological data, runoff data, anthropogenic surface water, and groundwater withdrawal records for industry, irrigation, urban residents, afforestation, rural population, livestock number, water quotas for rural residents and livestock, and relevant water consumption coefficients; they were considered as inputs of the Budyko-based human-induced water–energy balance (HWEB) model to quantify the attributions of changes of evapotranspiration and runoff in the Wuding River basin (WRB) at the annual scale
Model proposed in this paper, hydrological variability under human influence at the annual scale in the Wuding River basin (WRB) was investigated

Summary

Introduction

The global climate system has been undergoing a significant change in recent years, which, together with large-scale anthropogenic activities, is altering the hydrologic cycle, making the climate-driven hydrologic cycle more of a human–climate-driven hydrologic cycle [1]. It has been found in the global hydrological cycle that the natural streamflow is gradually vanishing, and the artificial runoff is increasing under the influence of intensive human interference. The global science plan “Panta Rhei—Everything flows” argues that social and hydrological systems have been coupled in many parts of the world under the impacts of human activities and climate change [6]. It emphasizes the need to understand the interactions of society and water, i.e., the interactions and feedbacks between the social system and the hydrological system

Methods

Results

Conclusion