Quantifying the Contribution of Climate Change and Human Activities to Runoff Changes in the Source Region of the Yellow River

Abstract

Assessing the characteristics of runoff changes and quantifying the contribution of influencing factors to runoff changes are crucial for water resources management and sustainable development in the source region of the Yellow River (SRYR). The intra-annual distribution of runoff depicted a double-peak effect. The first runoff peak in July was primarily influenced by precipitation, which did not completely flow after falling to the ground. However, some water was stored in the active layer of permafrost and released in September resulting in the second runoff peak. The contributions of precipitation and temperature to the runoff changes were 74.2% and 25.8%, respectively. The runoff peaks advanced by 15 and 6 days for the first and second peaks, respectively, owing to the influence of the cryosphere change. Principal component analysis revealed that the contributions of climate change and human activity to runoff fluctuations were 72.9% and 27.1%, respectively, during 1961-2018, indicating that hydrological processes were mainly influenced by climate change in the SRYR. The combined effect of climate change created a warm and dry trend after 1990, indicating a spatial distribution of wetness in the northwest and aridity in the southeast of the SRYR.

Application of SWAT Model for Assessment of Surface Runoff in Flash Flood Areas

“…The highest maximum runoff value was from the Chern River Basin Part 1. In addition, it was found that the highest occurrence of runoff happened in two periods, September (dry season-flood season) and October (flood season-dry season) of every land use year in all three river basins, as previously reported [43,[55][56][57]. Therefore, it can be concluded that recent land use changes under the highest annual rainfall will cause the basin's highest runoff.…”

Drought forecasting model for future climate change effects in a regional catchment area in northern iraq

“…This study utilized three RCP scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5) representing low, medium, and high socioeconomic developments. These three scenarios have been widely employed in numerous studies assessing the impacts of climate change [3,38]. Four GCMs (i.e., BCC-CSM1-1, CSIRO_MK3.6, HaDGEM2-ES, and NorESM1-M) were chosen depending on the previous literature to reduce the uncertainty in projected climate data.…”

Research Progress on Identification of Basin Water Yield Baseline and Regulation Slope Water Yield Process

“…Water is fluid and stored in different slope units such as mountains, forests, fields, lakes, grasslands, and sands in the basin, and the location, flow, and quality of these waters are deeply affected by climate change and human activities [15][16][17]. The water yield process of the basin slope under natural conditions is taken as the base scenario, the water yield process under climate change is used as the prediction scenario, and the water yield process under the disturbance of human activities is used as the comparison scenario, as shown in Fig.…”