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Impact of climatic and vegetation dynamic change on runoff over the Three Rivers Source Region based on the Community Land Model

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Abstract

The Three Rivers Source Region (TRSR), the headwater region of the Yellow River, the Mekong River, and the Yangtze River, plays a significant role in water resources, food security, economy, and society in the downstream areas. This study applied a series of offline regional simulations of the Community Land Model (CLM5.0) over the TRSR to evaluate the impacts of regional climate and vegetation change on runoff. Firstly, we evaluated the performance of runoff depth using CLM5.0, the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency between the simulated and observed runoff of TNH and ZMD gage stations are 0.56 and 0.51, respectively. The climate on the TRSR shows a warming and wetting trend, with the fastest warming rate in DJF (December, January, and February) and the fastest wetting rate in JJA (June, July, and August). Runoff increases in most of the TRSR with increased precipitation and decreases in the southeast of the Yellow River Source Region (YRSR). With increasing temperature, the simulated runoff shows a decreasing trend, while runoff tends to increase with precipitation enhancement over the TRSR. The results indicated that precipitation is the dominant factor affecting evapotranspiration (ET) and runoff, whilst the contribution of increasing temperature to runoff is 12%, which plays a regulatory role in the increased streamflow. In addition, Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM) in CLM5.0 was used to study the impact of vegetation change on runoff. Compared to the static vegetation, the simulated leaf area index (LAI) from the DGVM shows an increasing trend in most regions of the TRSR and the runoff in the TRSR decreases by 33%.

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Acknowledgements

We wanted to thank the China Meteorological Forcing Dataset provided by Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (http://www.tpedatabase.cn/portal/index.jsp); The observed precipitation data over the TP are provided by China Meteorological Administration (http://data.cma.cn/); The observed streamflow data are provided by Qinghai Hydrological and Water Resources Survey Bureau (http://water.sanjiangyuan.org.cn/); We also would like to thank CESM provider, the CESM2.1 is freely available at http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/.

Funding

This study was conducted under the auspices of the Chinese National Science Foundation Programs (41930759, 41822501, 41775016, 41975012, and 41875016), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA19070404, XDA23060601),the Science and Technology Research Plan of Gansu Province (20JR10RA070), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (QCH2019004), iLEAPs (integrated Land Ecosystem-Atmosphere Processes Study-iLEAPS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Land Surface Process and Climate Change in Cold and Arid Regions, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Science, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Mingshan Deng, Xianhong Meng, Lele Shu, Zhaoguo Li, Lin Zhao, Hao Chen, Lunyu Shang & Danrui Sheng

  2. Zoige Plateau Wetlands Ecosystem Research Station, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Science, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Mingshan Deng, Xianhong Meng, Lele Shu, Zhaoguo Li, Lin Zhao, Hao Chen, Lunyu Shang & Danrui Sheng

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, 100049, China

    Mingshan Deng

  4. Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Science, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Yaqiong Lu

  5. Lanzhou Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Xinmao Ao

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  1. Mingshan Deng
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Contributions

Data curation, MD, and DS; formal analysis, MD, XM, YL, and ZL; project administration, XM; software, MD, and LS; writing—original draft, MD; writing—review and editing, XM, YL, LZ, HC, LS. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xianhong Meng.

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Deng, M., Meng, X., Lu, Y. et al. Impact of climatic and vegetation dynamic change on runoff over the Three Rivers Source Region based on the Community Land Model. Clim Dyn 61, 1193–1208 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06619-0

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