Abstract
The Gongshui River basin exhibits one of the most serious soil erosion areas in southern China, and has always been the key control area of national soil and water conservation programs. This study used daily precipitation, streamflow, and sediment concentration data collected from 1957 to 2015 from the main hydrological stations of the Gongshui River to investigate streamflow and sediment discharge variations and their responses to precipitation and human activities. The Mann-Kendall and Pettitt’s test were used for trend and change-point detection. The double mass curve (DMC) method was employed to quantify the effects of precipitation change and human activities on hydrological regime shifts. The results showed insignificant trends of both annual precipitation and streamflow for all stations, while the sediment discharge of most stations exhibited significant decreasing trends. Change-point analyses revealed that all hydrologic stations except Mazhou had transition years. The estimation via DMC indicated that after the change point years, there was a rapid reduction in sediment discharge at Hanlinqiao, Fengkeng, Julongtan, Xiashan, and Chawu stations, but not at Mazhou, Ruijin, and Yangxinjian stations. Human activity provided a significantly greater contribution to sediment discharge than precipitation. The evidence clearly indicates that the degree and extension of conservation or destruction measures and the construction of large- and medium-sized reservoirs were the major factors significantly decreasing or increasing annual sediment discharge of the Gongshui River. This work could serve as the basis for decision making regarding river basin water resources management to estimate the effects of anthropogenic impacts on water and sediment discharge variations during the last few decades, thereby guiding adaptation and protection of the water resources of the Gongshui River flowing into the Poyang Lake.
Highlights
In the past half century, affected by global warming and frequent human activities, the natural balance of many basins in the world is changing gradually or abruptly, which has attracted worldwide attention [1]
Li et al [3] investigated temporal trends and historical phases of sediment flux delivered to the sea by nine major rivers in China, and quantified the contribution of key anthropogenic and natural driving forces, indicating that a reduction of sediment concentration dominates the sediment load decrease in China
Wu et al [5] applied ten commonly used quantitative methods drawn from three main categories—empirical statistics, elasticity-based methods, and hydrological modeling, to assess the impacts of climate change and human activities on runoff in the Yanhe River basin, and indicated that climate change had a larger effect on decreases in runoff, accounting for 54.1%
Summary
In the past half century, affected by global warming and frequent human activities, the natural balance of many basins in the world is changing gradually or abruptly, which has attracted worldwide attention [1]. Li et al [3] investigated temporal trends and historical phases of sediment flux delivered to the sea by nine major rivers in China, and quantified the contribution of key anthropogenic and natural driving forces, indicating that a reduction of sediment concentration dominates the sediment load decrease in China. They demonstrated that reservoirs, especially large reservoirs, mainly reduce sediments in Chinese rivers, while soil conservation measures had enhanced the decrease in sediment flux after 1999. As the longest river in Asia, the temporal change of sediment load and streamflow in the Yangtze River and possible causes and implications, have received widespread attention [6], and a great deal of work has been done on the climate change and the influence of large-scale water conservancy projects
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