Attribution of runoff and hydrological drought changes in an ecologically vulnerable basin in semi‐arid regions of China

Abstract

Climate change and human activities have been widely recognized as two major factors that deeply influence hydrological processes. Evaluating and identifying the contribution between different drivers contributes to better regional water management regulation. In this study, we used the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model to quantify the contributions of different climatic variables and human activities to runoff in the Hunhe basin, which has a semiarid climate, in northern China. Through trend analysis, the study period is divided into the ‘baseline period’ (1982–1999) and the ‘change period’ (2000–2020). The results indicated that compared with climate change, human activities were the major factors decreasing runoff, contributing more than 86.3% to the runoff reduction in the change period. Climate change increased winter runoff but decreased summer and autumn runoff, resulting in an overall decrease in runoff. There is a trend of increasing severity of hydrological drought in the Hunhe basin, where climate change accounted for 28.2% of the total impact and human activities accounted for 72.8%. The change in runoff and hydrological drought was mainly due to human activities, including changing farmland to grassland and forest. These results would be helpful for policy‐makers and researchers to better understand the responses of runoff and hydrological drought to these changing environmental conditions and offering references for future water resource planning and management at the basin scale.

The Characteristics of Air Quality Changes in Hohhot City in China and their Relationship with Meteorological and Socio-economic Factors

“…Air pollution affects ecosystem security, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, economic development and human health (Bashir et al, 2020;Ma et al, 2021;He et al, 2022;Xue et al, 2022;Alahmad et al, 2023;Guo et al, 2023b;Li et al, 2023). According to the World Health Organization (WHO) assessment report, 99% of the world's population lives in environments where air quality exceeds the recommended values of the WHO Air Quality Guidelines (AQG) (annual average PM2.5 concentration < 5 µg m -3 ).…”

Attribution Analysis of Climate Change and Human Activities on Runoff and Vegetation Changes in the Min River Basin

“…The main analytical methods include the hydrological modeling method [16], the multivariate statistical analysis method [17,18], and the empirical modeling method [19]. Hydrological models have certain physical mechanisms that are suitable for the hydrological simulation of watersheds of different scales and complexity [20][21][22]. The model requires high data accuracy and continuity, although there are large uncertainties in the model parameters and structure [23].…”

Effects of Climatic Disturbance on the Trade-Off between the Vegetation Pattern and Water Balance Based on a Novel Model and Accurately Remotely Sensed Data in a Semiarid Basin

“…Studies have shown that vegetation greening in humid areas has not substantially reduced runoff and soil moisture in watersheds by enhancing water recirculation, whereas this has not been the case in arid areas [17]. In arid regions, vegetation greening might lead to a series of negative ecohydrological effects in watersheds, such as reduced river runoff, insufficient ecological water demand, soil salinization, and reduced species diversity [18,19]. Wu et al [20] found that the main cause of runoff attenuation in the transition zone between the Qinling Mountains and the Loess Plateau was vegetation greening.…”