1 State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China;
2 Division of Hydrology Water-Land Resources in Cold and Arid Regions, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 73000, China
Understanding the impact of mountain landscapes on water balance in the upper Heihe River watershed in northwestern China
1 State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China;
2 Division of Hydrology Water-Land Resources in Cold and Arid Regions, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 73000, China
摘要 Estimating the impact of mountain landscape on hydrology or water balance is essential for the sustainable development strategies of water resources. Specifically, understanding how the change of each landscape influences hydrological components will greatly improve the predictability of hydrological responses to mountain landscape changes and thus can help the government make sounder decisions. In the paper, we used the VIC (Variable Infiltration Capacity) model to conduct hydrological modeling in the upper Heihe River watershed, along with a frozen-soil module and a glacier melting module to improve the simulation. The improved model performed satisfactorily. We concluded that there are differences in the runoff generation of mountain landscape both in space and time. About 50% of the total runoff at the catchment outlet were generated in mid-mountain zone (2,900–4,000 m asl), and water was mainly consumed in low mountain region (1,700–2,900 m asl) because of the higher re-quirements of trees and grasses. The runoff coefficient was 0.37 in the upper Heihe River watershed. Barren landscape produced the largest runoff yields (52.46% of the total runoff) in the upper Heihe River watershed, fol-lowed by grass¬land (34.15%), shrub (9.02%), glacier (3.57%), and forest (0.49%). In order to simulate the impact of landscape change on hydrological components, three landscape change scenarios were designed in the study. Scenario 1, 2 and 3 were to convert all shady slope landscapes at 2,000–3,300 m, 2,000–3,700 m, and 2,000–4,000 m asl respectively to forest lands, with forest coverage rate increased to 12.4%, 28.5% and 42.0%, respectively. The runoff at the catchment outlet correspondingly declined by 3.5%, 13.1% and 24.2% under the three scenarios. The forest landscape is very important in water conservation as it reduced the flood peak and in-creased the base flow. The mountains as “water towers” play important roles in water resources generation and the impact of mountain land¬scapes on hydrology is significant.
Abstract: Estimating the impact of mountain landscape on hydrology or water balance is essential for the sustainable development strategies of water resources. Specifically, understanding how the change of each landscape influences hydrological components will greatly improve the predictability of hydrological responses to mountain landscape changes and thus can help the government make sounder decisions. In the paper, we used the VIC (Variable Infiltration Capacity) model to conduct hydrological modeling in the upper Heihe River watershed, along with a frozen-soil module and a glacier melting module to improve the simulation. The improved model performed satisfactorily. We concluded that there are differences in the runoff generation of mountain landscape both in space and time. About 50% of the total runoff at the catchment outlet were generated in mid-mountain zone (2,900–4,000 m asl), and water was mainly consumed in low mountain region (1,700–2,900 m asl) because of the higher re-quirements of trees and grasses. The runoff coefficient was 0.37 in the upper Heihe River watershed. Barren landscape produced the largest runoff yields (52.46% of the total runoff) in the upper Heihe River watershed, fol-lowed by grass¬land (34.15%), shrub (9.02%), glacier (3.57%), and forest (0.49%). In order to simulate the impact of landscape change on hydrological components, three landscape change scenarios were designed in the study. Scenario 1, 2 and 3 were to convert all shady slope landscapes at 2,000–3,300 m, 2,000–3,700 m, and 2,000–4,000 m asl respectively to forest lands, with forest coverage rate increased to 12.4%, 28.5% and 42.0%, respectively. The runoff at the catchment outlet correspondingly declined by 3.5%, 13.1% and 24.2% under the three scenarios. The forest landscape is very important in water conservation as it reduced the flood peak and in-creased the base flow. The mountains as “water towers” play important roles in water resources generation and the impact of mountain land¬scapes on hydrology is significant.
This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foun-dation of China (41130638), the key innovation project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KZCX2-YW-QN310) and the National Science and Technology Support Program (2013BAB05B03).
通讯作者:
Jia QIN
E-mail: qinjia418@163.com
引用本文:
Jia QIN, YongJian DING, JinKui WU, MingJie GAO, ShuHua YI, ChuanCheng ZHAO, BaiS. Understanding the impact of mountain landscapes on water balance in the upper Heihe River watershed in northwestern China[J]. 干旱区科学, 2013, 5(3): 366-383.
Jia QIN, YongJian DING, JinKui WU, MingJie GAO, ShuHua YI, ChuanCheng ZHAO, BaiSheng YE, Man LI, ShengXia WANG. Understanding the impact of mountain landscapes on water balance in the upper Heihe River watershed in northwestern China. Journal of Arid Land, 2013, 5(3): 366-383.
Andy J, Reuter H, Nelson A, et al. 2008. Hole-filled seamless SRTM data V4. Italy: International Centre for Tropical Agriculture. [2008-8-12]. http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org.Arnell N. 1999a. A simple water balance model for the simulation of streamflow over a large geophysical domain. Journal of Hydrology, 217: 314–335.Arnell N. 1999b. The effect of climate change on hydrological regimes in Europe: a continental perspective. Global Environment Change, 8: 5–23.Bowling L, Lettenmaier D. 1997. Evaluation of the effects of forest roads on streamflow in Hard and Ware Creeks, Washington. Technical Report No. 155, Seattle: Department of Civil Engineering, University of Washington.Cheng G, Zhao C. 2008. An integrated study of ecological and hydrological processes in the inland river basin of the arid regions, China. Advances in Earth Science, 23(10): 1005–1012.Cherkauer K, Lettenmaier D. 1999. Hydrologic effects of frozen soils in the upper Mississippi River basin. Journal of Geophysics Research, 104(D16): 19599–19610. Cherkauer K, Bowling L, Lettenmaier D. 2003. Variable infiltration capacity cold land process model updates. Global and Planetary Change, 38: 151–159.Cherkauer K, Lettenmaier D. 2003. Simulation of spatial variability in snow and frozen soil. Journal of Geophysics Research, doi: 10.1029/2003JD003575.Feng G. 2008. The influences of human activities on forest losses in the Qilian Mountain since the periods of Republic of China. Research of Qaidam Development, 1: 32–34.Franczyk J, Changk H. 2009. The effects of climate change and urbanization on the runoff of the rock creek basin in the Portland metropolitan area, Oregon, USA. Hydrological Processes, 23: 805–815.Gao Q, Yang X. 1985. The Features of Interior Rivers and Feeding of Glacial Melt Water in the Hexi Region, Gansu Province. Memoirs of Lanzhou Institute of Glaciology and Cryopedology Chinese Acad¬emy of Science (Glacier Variation and Utilizations in Qillan Mountains), No. 5. Beijing: Sciences Press, 131–141.Ghaffari G, Keesstra S, Ghodousi J, et al. 2009. SWAT-simulated hydrological impact of land-use change in the Zanjanrood Basin, Northwest Iran. Hydrological Processes, doi: 10.1002/hyp.7530.Gleick P. 1999. Study from the water sector of the national assessment. Journal of American Resource Association, 35: 1297–1300.He J, Song G, Jiang X, et al. 2008. Relation between glacial melt water runoff and mountainous runoff in 2006 in four typical river basins of Heihe River water system. Journal of Desert Research, 28: 1186–1189.Hernandez M, Miller S, Goodrich D, et al. 2000. Modeling runoff response to land cover and rainfall spatial variability in semi-arid watersheds. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 64: 285–298.Hock R, Jansson P, Braun L. 2005. Modeling the response of mountain glacier discharge to climate warming. In: Reasoner M A. Global Change and Mountain Regions. Springer: Netherlands, 243–252Jia Y, Ding X, Qin C, et al. 2009. Distributed modeling of landsurface water and energy budgets in the inland Heihe river basin of China. Hydrological Earth System Sciences, 13: 1849–1866. Jiang X. 2008. Model study of the surface energy and mass balance of July 1st Glacier at Qilian Mountains in China during the summer ablation period. Ph.D. Dissertation. Beijing: Chinese Academy of Sciences.Kang E, Chen R, Zhang Z, et al. 2008. Some problems facing hydrological and ecological researches in the mountain watershed at the upper stream of an inland river basin. Advance Earth Sciences, 23: 675–681.Li H, Wang J. 2008. The snowmelt runoff model applied in the upper Heihe River Basin. Journal of Glaciology and Geocrylogy, 30(5): 769–775.Li X, Cheng G, Jin H, et al. 2008. Cryospheric change in China. Global and Planetary Change, 62: 210–218.Liang X. 1994. A two-layer variable infiltration capacity land surface representation for general circulation models. Water resources series, Tech. Report No. 140, University of Washington: Department of Civil Engineering.Liu Y, Gupta H, Springer E, et al. 2008a. Linking science with envi-ronmental decision making: experiences from an integrated model-ing approach to supporting sustainable water resources management. Environmental Modeling and Software, 23(7): 846–858.Liu Y, Mahmoud M, Hartmann H, et al. 2008b. Formal scenario devel-opment for environmental impact assessment studies. In: Jakeman A, Voinov A, Rizzoli A, et al. Environmental Modeling, Software and Decision Support: Developments in Integrated Environmental Assessment, Elsevier: Amsterdam, 3: 145–162.Lohmann D, Raschke E, Nijssen B, et al. 1998a. Regional scale hy-drology: I. Formulation of the VIC-2L model coupled to a routing model. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 43: 131–141.Lohmann D, Raschke E, Nijssen B, et al. 1998b. Regional scale hy-drology: II. Application of the VIC-2L model to the Weser River, Germany. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 43: 143–158.Luo L, Robock A, Vinnikov K, et al. 2003. Effects of frozen soil on soil temperature, spring infiltration, and runoff: results from the PILPS 2(d) experiment at Valdai, Russia. Journal of Hydrometeor, 4: 334–351. Messerli B, Viviroli D, Weingartner R. 2004. Mountains of the world: vulnerable water towers for the 21st century. Contribution to the Royal Colloquium on Mountain Areas, Abisko 2003. AMBIO Spe-cial Report, 13: 29–34.Miller S, Kepner W, Mehaffey M, et al. 2002. Integrating landscape assessment and hydrologic modeling for land cover change analysis. Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 38(4): 915–929.Mohammed M, Liu Y, Hartman H, et al. 2009. A formal framework for scenario development in support of environmental decision-making. Environmental Modeling and Software, 24(7): 798–808.Monteith J. 1973. Principles of Environmental Physics. London: Edward Arnold Publishers, 241.Moriasi D, Arnold J, Van Liew M, et al. 2007. Model evaluation guide-lines for systematic quantification of accuracy in watershed simula-tions. Transactions of the Asabe, 50: 885–900.Nash J E, Sutcliffe J V. 1970. River flow forecasting through conceptual models, Part I–A discussion of principles. Journal of Hydrology, 10: 282–290.Nijssen B, Lettenmaier D, Liang X, et al. 1997. Streamflow simulation for continental scale river basins. Water Resource Research, 33: 711–724.Nijssen B, O’Donnell G, Hamlet A, et al. 2001. Hydrologic sensitivity of global rivers to climate change. Climate Change, 50: 143–175.Noilhan J, Planton S. 1989. A simple parameterization of land surface processes for meteorological models. Monthly Weather Review, 117: 536–549. Qin J. 2011. The regulate function of mountain forest landscape on fluvial runoff discharge in the arid areas of China. IEEE Interna-tional Conference on Remote Sensing: Environment and Trans-portation Engineering. Nanjing: IEEE Conference Publications, 5546–5551.Ran Y H, Li X, Lu L. 2010. Evaluation of four remote sensing based land cover products over China. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 31(2): 391–401.Shuttleworth W. 1993. Evaporation. In: Maidment D R. Handbook of Hydrology. New York: McGraw Hill Inc.Viviroli D, Weingartner R, Messerli B. 2003. Assessing the hydrological significance of the world’s mountains. Mountain Research and Development, 23(1): 32–40.Viviroli D, Weingartner R. 2004. The hydrological significance of mountains: from regional to global scale. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 8(6): 1016–1029.Wang G, Yang L, Chen L, et al. 2005. Impact of land use changes on groundwater resources in the Heihe River basin. Journal of Geo-graphical Sciences, 15(4): 405–414.Wang J, Kang E, Jin B. 2001. Hydrological function of frozen soil in forest area in the upper reaches of the Heihe River. Journal of Northwest Forestry University, 16: 30–34.Wang N, Zhang S, He J, et al. 2009. Tracing the major source area of the mountainous runoff generation of the Heihe River in northwest China using stable isotope technique. Chinese Science Bulletin, 16: 2751–2757.Wigmosta M, Vail L, Lettenmaier D. 1994. A distributed hydrol-ogy-vegetation model for complex terrain. Water Resources Research, 30(6): 1665–1679Wood E, Lettenmaier D, Liang X, et al. 1998. The project for inter-comparison of land-surface parameterization schemes (PILPS) phase-2(c) Red-Arkansas River experiment: 1. Experiment descrip-tion and summary intercomparisons. Journal of Global and Planetary Change, 19: 115–135.Yang Z. 1990. Glacier Water Resources in China. Lanzhou: Gansu Science and Technology Press.Yatagai, A, Kamiguchi K, Arakwa O, et al. 2012. APHRODITE: con-structing a long-term daily gridded precipitation dataset for asia based on a dense network of rain gauges. Bulletin of American Me-teorological Society 93: 1401–1415. Zhao Q, Ye B, Ding Y, et al. 2012. Coupling a glacier melt model to the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model for hydrological model-ing in north-western China. Environmental Earth Sciences, doi: 10.1007/s12665-012-1718-8.
2013, Vol. 5 
