Abstract
Water resource issues are a challenging area of research in semiarid regions of the world. The objective of the current study was to reveal the main characteristics of seasonal surface runoff for the semiarid western Heilongjiang Province of China. The Alun River Basin, which has hydrological and meteorological characteristics of the local region, was adopted as the study location. A distributed rainfall-runoff combined with snowmelt hydrological model was used to carry out the runoff calculation for the six years (2011–2016). The results indicated that: The mean annual runoff coefficient was 0.34; snowmelt runoff accounted for 2.2% of annual total runoff in 2011–2016; the main part of annual rainfall and runoff was concentrated in the rainy season from June to September, the proportions of rainfall and runoff in this period were 78% and 86% to that of the annual means of 2011–2016; the peak flow represents a decreased trend since 2013, and evidently decreased in 2015 and 2016; less annual precipitation complex with paddy field retention of rainwater and runoff led to the peak flow and annual runoff coefficient in 2016 were obviously lower than that of annual means of 2011–2016. The results are expected to provide the basis for rational development and utilization of surface runoff, and further researches on surface runoff and water resources of the semiarid western Heilongjiang Province of China.
Highlights
Water resource issues are a challenging area of research in arid and semiarid regions of the world [1]
The Alun River Basin was chosen as the study area because it exhibits diversified landscape types in terms of geology, morphology, soils, hydrology, and climatic conditions, and it represents several different land use patterns that are typical of the semiarid environment of western Heilongjiang
Rainfall-runoff modeling combined with snowmelt numerical calculation was performed for a study period of six years (2011–2016)
Summary
Water resource issues are a challenging area of research in arid and semiarid regions of the world [1]. Semiarid regions are characterized by water scarcity, high-intensity and low-frequency rainfall, as well as runoff generation uncertainties [2]. The stability of agro-ecosystems in semiarid areas strongly depends on the highly effective use of precipitation and other water resources [3]. Climate change impacts seasonal and annual rainfall characteristics [5,6,7], impacting the runoff process [8]. River runoff and its seasonal trends directly affect the development and utilization of water resources in different basins. It is extremely important to study the characteristics of runoff changes and understand the behavior of these trends.
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