Abstract
The Yellow River is one of the rivers with the largest amount of sediment in the world. The amount of incoming sediment has an important impact on water resources management, sediment regulation schemes, and the construction of water conservancy projects. The Loess Plateau is the main source of sediment in the Yellow River Basin. Floods caused by extreme precipitation are the primary driving forces of soil erosion in the Loess Plateau. In this study, we constructed the extreme precipitation scenarios based on historical extreme precipitation records in the main sediment-yielding area in the middle reaches of the Yellow River. The amount of sediment yield under current land surface conditions was estimated according to the relationship between extreme precipitation and sediment yield observations in the historical period. The results showed that the extreme rainfall scenario of the study area reaches to 159.9 mm, corresponding to a recurrence period of 460 years. The corresponding annual sediment yield under the current land surface condition was range from 0.821 billion tons to 1.899 billion tons, and the median annual sediment yield is 1.355 billion tons, of which more than 91.9% of sediment yields come from the Hekouzhen to Longmen sectionand the Jinghe River basin. Therefore, even though the vegetation of the Loess Plateau has been greatly improved, and a large number of terraces and check dams have been built, the flood control and key project operation of the Yellow River still need to be prepared to deal with the large amount of sediment transport.
Highlights
Global warming increases the water holding capacity of the atmosphere, which is expected to increase the probability of extreme precipitation at the regional scale (Meehl et al, 2000; IPCC, 2012)
The annual sediment yield of HLR and Jinghe River Basin (JHR) accounted for 91.9% of the total sediment yield in the study area
The sediment yield under the current land surface conditions and this extreme precipitation scenario can be obtained by adding the sediment deposited in the check dams and reservoirs in the corresponding year of each tributary
Summary
Global warming increases the water holding capacity of the atmosphere, which is expected to increase the probability of extreme precipitation at the regional scale (Meehl et al, 2000; IPCC, 2012). Extreme climate events have received increasingly attentions in hydro-meteorological research since they are the driving forces behind many natural disasters, such as floods and landslides (Alexander et al, 2006; Du et al, 2013). Extreme precipitation plays a key role in soil erosion processes (Frich et al, 2002; Trenberth, 2011; Fischer et al, 2012). Many studies have investigated the effects of extreme precipitation on sediment yields worldwide. Buendia et al (2015) found that when extreme rainfall changed in the Mediterranean region, river The amount of soil erosion caused by a rainstorm can account for 60% or even more than 90% of the total annual erosion (Wang et al, 2016; Comino et al, 2017).
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