Abstract
Coal mining and soil-water conservation are the two major human interventions on the Loess Plateau in China. Analyzing their impacts on hydrological processes is of great significance for sustainable water resource management. Using hydrological simulation (Soil and Water Assessment Tool, SWAT) and a data-driven method (double mass curve, DMC), the contributions of these two human activities and climate change to the runoff decrease were analyzed in the upper Fenhe River. The runoff in the three affected periods (1967–1987, 1988–1994, and 1995–2017) decreased by 7.5%, 28.2%, and 24.1%, respectively, compared with the base period (1957–1966). In the first affected period (1967–1987), the amount of coal mining activities was small, human activities had little impact on runoff. In the second (1988–1994) and third (1995–2017) periods, as the coal mining and soil-water conservation intensified, their contributions to the runoff decrease rapidly increased. Due to the uncertainties in the model structure and parameters, in addition to the impact of the data accuracy, the results obtained from the two methods were different, but the proportions and the trends of the contribution rates in the different periods were consistent.
Highlights
Shanxi Province, located in central China, is rich in coal resources and is the coal energy base of China
Based on the SWAT model, the digital river network was extracted, the terrain parameters were calculated, the land use/land cover and soil parameters were input into the model, and the study area was divided into 59 sub-basins and 311 hydrological response units (HRUs)
According to simulation accuracy guidelines proposed by Moriasi et al [19], model simulation can be judged as satisfactory if Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NSE) > 0.50 and RSR ≤ 0.70, and if percent bias (PBIAS) ± 25% for streamflow
Summary
Shanxi Province, located in central China, is rich in coal resources and is the coal energy base of China. More than 14 billion tons of coal were mined in Shanxi. Long-term, high-intensity, and unscientific coal mining has resulted in large mined-out areas in Shanxi Province. The Chinese Loess Plateau is an area with severe soil erosion and a fragile ecological environment. In order to control soil erosion and restore the ecological environment, the Chinese government has implemented a large-scale soil-water conservation project in this region over the past 30 years [2]. The coal mining and soil-water conservation project have had significant impacts on the natural hydrological processes. Studying the impacts of the two human activities on runoff is important for scientific water resource management
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