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Quantification of human and climate contributions to multi-dimensional hydrological alterations: A case study in the Upper Minjiang River, China

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Abstract

Dual factors of climate and human on the hydrological process are reflected not only in changes in the spatiotemporal distribution of water resource amounts but also in the various characteristics of river flow regimes. Isolating and quantifying their contributions to these hydrological alterations helps us to comprehensively understand the response mechanism and patterns of hydrological process to the two kinds of factors. Here we develop a general framework using hydrological model and 33 indicators to describe hydrological process and quantify the impact from climate and human. And we select the Upper Minjiang River (UMR) as a case to explore its feasibility. The results indicate that our approach successfully recognizes the characteristics of river flow regimes in different scenarios and quantitatively separates the climate and human contributions to multi-dimensional hydrological alterations. Among these indicators, 26 of 33 indicators decrease over the past half-century (1961–2012) in the UMR, with change rates ranging from 1.3% to 33.2%, and the human impacts are the dominant factor affecting hydrological processes, with an average relative contribution rate of 58.6%. Climate change causes an increase in most indicators, with an average relative contribution rate of 41.4%. Specifically, changes in precipitation and reservoir operation may play a considerable role in inducing these alterations. The findings in this study help us better understand the response mechanism of hydrological process under changing environment and is conducive to climate change adaptation, water resource planning and ecological construction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Institute of Land Surface System and Sustainable Development, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Yuhang Zhang & Aizhong Ye

  2. State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing, 100038, China

    Jinjun You

  3. POWERCHINA Chengdu Engineering Corporation Limited, Chengdu, 611130, China

    Xiangyang Jing

Authors
  1. Yuhang Zhang
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  2. Aizhong Ye
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  3. Jinjun You
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  4. Xiangyang Jing
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aizhong Ye.

Additional information

Foundation

Natural Science Foundation of China, No.51879009, No.52079143; Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program, No.2019QZKK0405; National Key Research and Development Program of China, No.2018YFE0196000, No.2017YFC0404405; Interdisciplinary Research Foundation of Beijing Normal University for the First-Year Doctoral Students, No.BNUXKJC1905; Independent Research Projects of POWERCHINA Chengdu Engineering Corporation Limited, No.P34516

Author

Zhang Yuhang (1994-), specialized in hydrometeorological ensemble forecast. E-mail: zhangyh19@mail.bnu.edu.cn

Data availability

The gridded daily precipitation data and gauge-based meteorological data can be obtained from the National Climate Centre of the Chinese Meteorological Administration (CMA-NCC, http://data.cma.cn/data/cdcdetail/dataCode/SURF_CLI_CHN_PRE_DAY_GRID_0.5.html); Daily and monthly streamflow records for the ZPP hydrological station were collected from the Hydrological Yearbook of the Bureau of Hydrology, Yangtze River Water Resources Commission, in China; Digital elevation model (DEM) data with a spatial resolution of 3 arc-seconds were downloaded from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission website (SRTM, http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/); The land use data were provided by the National Earth System Science Data Center, National Science & Technology Infrastructure of China (http://www.geodata.cn); The soil types data can be downloaded from the world soil data-base (Harmonized World Soil Database version 1.2, http://www.fao.org/soils-portal/soil-survey/soil-maps-and-databases/harmonized-world-soil-database-v12/en/).

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Zhang, Y., Ye, A., You, J. et al. Quantification of human and climate contributions to multi-dimensional hydrological alterations: A case study in the Upper Minjiang River, China. J. Geogr. Sci. 31, 1102–1122 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-021-1887-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-021-1887-z

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