Abstract
Climate factors and human activities are the leading causes of changes in the hydrological cycle. In addition to being an important part of the hydrological cycle, runoff is also an important indicator for assessing the amount of available water. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the reasons that have caused changes in runoff. In this study, the causes of runoff changes in the alluvial fan of the Choshui River from 1980–2018 are explored. Two simple methods, including a decomposition method based on the Budyko structure and a method based on climate elasticity, for which the necessary data are easy to obtain, are used to quantify the impact of climate factors and human activities on runoff changes. The results show that the runoff in the long term shows a significant transition point in 2003, where climate factors have contributed more than 90% of the change, while the influence of human activities on the changes in runoff appears to be relatively small. Moreover, the Budyko method and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) show that the vegetation cover has decreased. In addition to providing a simple method to assess the causes of changes in runoff, this study also analyzes the causes of changes in the runoff of the alluvial fan of the Choshui River to provide a reference for water resource policy and land use management.
Highlights
Runoff is an important indicator to measure whether available water can be supplied continuously
This study takes into consideration the complex background of natural factors such as global warming, uneven distribution of precipitation in time and space, and human activities such as agricultural irrigation, industrial area development, and large-scale water diversion projects that occur to the alluvial fan of the Choshui River, and assesses the causes of changes in runoff in an attempt to obtain a better understanding of the mechanisms that affect runoff in the long term
The precipitation data are from nine rainfall stations near the Choshui River alluvial fan, obtained from the annual hydrological reports published by the Water Resources Agency of Ministry of Economic Affairs [38]
Summary
Runoff is an important indicator to measure whether available water can be supplied continuously. Ma et al [11] used the Geomorphology-Based Hydrological Model (GBHM) to explore the catchment area of the Miyun Reservoir in China, showing that climatic factors are the main influencing factor of changes in runoff flow. Xu et al [17] used the Budyko framework combined with climate elasticity to explore the mechanism that causes changes in runoff of the Haihe basin of China. This study takes into consideration the complex background of natural factors such as global warming, uneven distribution of precipitation in time and space, and human activities such as agricultural irrigation, industrial area development, and large-scale water diversion projects that occur to the alluvial fan of the Choshui River, and assesses the causes of changes in runoff in an attempt to obtain a better understanding of the mechanisms that affect runoff in the long term. This study mainly uses simple and flexible methods to quantify the contribution of climate factors and human activities to changes in runoff
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