Authors:
Runqi Zhao
;
Mingfang Zhang
and
Yiping Hou
Affiliation:
School of Resources and Environment, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and Chengdu, China
Keyword(s):
Runoff, vegetation change, climate variability, the Loess Plateau
Abstract:
Vegetation change and climate variability are often two main drivers for runoff variation. However, other factors such as human activities (e.g., road construction, agriculture, dams, urbanization) may also yield significant impact on runoff in populated watersheds. In this study, we selected the Jingchuan watershed, a sub-watershed of the Jing River Basin in the Loess Plateau as an example, to quantify runoff variation attributed to vegetation change, climate variability and other factors on runoff based on a single watershed approach. Firstly, we applied modified double mass curve (MDMC) and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) intervention to identify the impact of climate variability attributed to runoff variation. A significant breakpoint was detected in 1998. Then, multivariate Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMAX) was used to differentiate the impact of vegetation change and other factors from non-climatic factors. The results showed that the average an
nual runoff attributed to vegetation change, climate variability and other factors were -16.61mm, 8.91mm and -1.33mm, respectively, resulting in a 9.03mm reduction in annual runoff over the period of 1998-2003 comparing with the runoff without impacts. These findings are beneficial to water supply and vegetation management in semi-arid areas such as Loess Plateau of China.
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