1 School of Water Conservancy, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Zhengzhou 450046, China 2 School of Water Conservancy and Environment, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China
Climate change and Land Use/Cover Change (LUCC) have been identified as two primary factors affecting watershed hydrological regime. This study analyzed the trends of streamflow, precipitation, air temperature and potential evapotranspiration (PET) from 1962 to 2008 in the Jihe watershed in northwestern Loess Plateau of China using the Mann-Kendall test. The streamflow responses to climate change and LUCC were quantified independently by the elasticity method. The results show that the streamflow presented a dramatic decline with a turning point occurred in 1971, while the precipitation and PET did not change significantly. The results also show that the temperature rose markedly especially since 1990s with an approximate increase of 1.74°C over the entire research period (1962-2008). Using land use transition matrix, we found that slope cropland was significantly converted to terrace between 1970s and 1990s and that forest cover increased relatively significantly because of the Grain for Green Project after 2000. The streamflow reduction was predominantly caused by LUCC and its contribution reached up to 90.2%, while the contribution of climate change to streamflow decline was only 9.8%. Although the analytical results between the elasticity method and linear regression model were not satisfactorily consistent, they both indicated that LUCC (human activity) was the major factor causing streamflow decline in the Jihe watershed from 1962 to 2008.
Al-Mukhtar M, Dunger V, Merkel B.2014. Assessing the impacts of climate change on hydrology of the upper reach of the Spree River: Germany. Water Resources Management, 28(10): 2731-2749.
2
Ashraf Vaghefi S, Mousavi S J, Abbaspour K C, et al.2014. Analyses of the impact of climate change on water resources components, drought and wheat yield in semi-arid regions: Karkheh river basin in Iran. Hydrological Processes, 28(4): 2018-2032.
3
Berti A, Tardivo G, Chiaudani A, et al.2014. Assessing reference evapotranspiration by the Hargreaves method in north-eastern Italy. Agricultural Water Management, 140: 20-25.
4
Brown A E, Zhang L, McMahon T A, et al.2005. A review of paired catchment studies for determining changes in water yield resulting from alterations in vegetation. Journal of Hydrology, 310(1-4): 28-61.
5
Chen J F, Li X B, Zhang M.2005. Simulating the impacts of climate variation and land-cover changes on basin hydrology: a case study of the Suomo basin. Science in China Series D: Earth Sciences, 48(9): 1501-1509.
6
Chen S Y, Shi Y Y, Guo Y Z, et al.2010. Temporal and spatial variation of annual mean air temperature in arid and semi-arid region in northwest China over a recent 46 year period. Journal of Arid Land, 2(2): 87-97.
7
Cuo L, Zhang Y X, Gao Y H, et al.2013. The impacts of climate change and land cover/use transition on the hydrology in the upper Yellow River Basin, China. Journal of Hydrology, 502: 37-52.
8
Fan X G, Ma Z G, Yang Q, et al.2015. Land use/land cover changes and regional climate over the Loess Plateau during 2001-2009. Part I: observational evidence. Climatic Change, 129(3-4): 427-440.
9
Fiseha B M, Setegn S G, Melesse A M, et al.2014. Impact of climate change on the hydrology of upper Tiber River Basin using bias corrected regional climate model. Water Resources Management, 28(5): 1327-1343.
10
Hu Y R, Maskey S, Uhlenbrook S, et al.2011. Streamflow trends and climate linkages in the source region of the Yellow River, China. Hydrological Processes, 25(22): 3399-3411.
11
Li Q Y, Yu X X, Xin Z B, et al.2013. Modeling the effects of climate change and human activities on the hydrological processes in a semi-arid watershed of Loess Plateau. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, 18(4): 401-412.
12
Li X M, Li L H, Guo L P, et al.2011. Impact of climate factors on runoff in the Kaidu River watershed: path analysis of 50-year data. Journal of Arid Land, 3(2): 132-140.
13
Li Z, Liu W Z, Zhang X C, et al.2010. Assessing and regulating the impacts of climate change on water resources in the Heihe watershed on the Loess Plateau of China. Science China Earth Sciences, 53(5): 710-720.
14
Li Z, Liu W Z, Zhang X C, et al.2011. Assessing the site-specific impacts of climate change on hydrology, soil erosion and crop yields in the Loess Plateau of China. Climatic Change, 105(1-2): 223-242.
15
Liang W, Bai D, Jin Z, et al.2015. A study on the streamflow change and its relationship with climate change and ecological restoration measures in a sediment concentrated region in the Loess Plateau, China. Water Resources Management, 29(11): 4045-4060.
16
Liu C M, Li D F, Tian Y, et al.2003. An application study of DEM based distributed hydrological model on macroscale watershed. Progress in Geography, 22(5): 437-445. (in Chinese)
17
Milly P C D, Dunne K A.2002. Macroscale water fluxes 2. Water and energy supply control of their interannual variability. Water Resources Research, 38(10): 24-1-24-9, doi: 10.1029/2001WR000760.
18
Myronidis D, Stathis D, Ioannou K, et al.2012. An integration of statistics temporal methods to track the effect of drought in a shallow Mediterranean Lake. Water Resources Management, 26(15): 4587-4605.
19
Nunes A N, de Almeida A C, Coelho C O A.2011. Impacts of land use and cover type on runoff and soil erosion in a marginal area of Portugal. Applied Geography, 31(2): 687-699.
20
Perazzoli M, Pinheiro A, Kaufmann V.2013. Assessing the impact of climate change scenarios on water resources in southern Brazil. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 58(1): 77-87.
21
Rodriguez-Iturbe I, Porporato A, Laio F, et al.2001. Intensive or extensive use of soil moisture: plant strategies to cope with stochastic water availability. Geophysical Research Letters, 28(23): 4495-4497.
22
Schaake J C.1990. From climate to flow. In: Waggoner P E. Climate Change and U.S. Water Resources. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 177-206.
23
Schilling K E, Chan K S, Liu H, et al.2010. Quantifying the effect of land use land cover change on increasing discharge in the Upper Mississippi River. Journal of Hydrology, 387(3-4): 343-345.
24
Tang L X, Zhang Z Q, Wang X J, et al.2010. Streamflow response to climate and landuse changes in Qingshui River watershed in the loess hilly-gully region of Western Shanxi Province, China. Chinese Journal of Plant Ecology, 34(7): 800-810. (in Chinese)
25
Wang G Q, Zhang J Y, He R M.2006. Impacts of environmental change on runoff in Fenhe river basin of the middle Yellow River. Advances in Water Science, 17(6): 853-858. (in Chinese)
26
Xu X Y, Yang D W, Yang H B, et al.2014. Attribution analysis based on the Budyko hypothesis for detecting the dominant cause of runoff decline in Haihe basin. Journal of Hydrology, 510: 530-540.
27
Xu Y P, Zhang X J, Ran Q H, et al.2013. Impact of climate change on hydrology of upper reaches of Qiantang River Basin, East China. Journal of Hydrology, 483: 51-60.
28
Xu Z X, Li J Y, Liu C M.2007. Long-term trend analysis for major climate variables in the Yellow River Basin. Hydrological Processes, 21(14): 1935-1948.
29
Yang H B, Yang D W.2011. Derivation of climate elasticity of runoff to assess the effects of climate change on annual runoff. Water Resources Research, 47(7): W07526, doi: 10.1029/2010WR009287.
30
Yang H B, Qi J, Xu X Y, et al.2014. The regional variation in climate elasticity and climate contribution to runoff across China. Journal of Hydrology, 517: 607-616.
31
Yang X L, Ren L L, Liu Y, et al.2014. Hydrological response to land use and land cover changes in a sub-watershed of West Liaohe River Basin, China. Journal of Arid Land, 6(6): 678-689.
32
Zhan C S, Zeng S D, Jiang S S, et al.2014. An integrated approach for partitioning the effect of climate change and human activities on surface runoff. Water Resources Management, 28(11): 3843-3858.
33
Zhang D, Liu X M, Liu C M, et al.2013. Responses of runoff to climatic variation and human activities in the Fenhe River, China. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 27(6): 1293-1301.
34
Zhang L, Dawes W R, Walker G R.2001. Response of mean annual evapotranspiration to vegetation changes at catchment scale. Water Resources Research, 37(3): 701-708.
2017, Vol. 9 
), Subing LYU1, Fang WAN1
