Abstract
The Ning-Meng reach of the Yellow River in China is located in a high-latitude area, and river freezes up and breaks up every year, leading to ice flood and disaster. Since the 1990s, due to the rising winter temperatures, river channel shrinkage and impacts of reservoir operation, the river ice regime of the Ning-Meng reach has changed. This paper investigated reservoir operation effect on river ice regime by eliminating the impact of climatic conditions, and the test method could be applied to other rivers, where similar anthropogenic impacts can be suspected to affect the river ice regime. The results show that compared to the statistics when there were no reservoirs, the duration of ice freezing days reduced 8–33 days, and the ice cover thickness was 16–25 cm thinner than that without reservoirs. The average number of ice flood incidents per year decreased from 11.61 to 3.25, and the number of disasters reduced from 1.69 to 1.41. Moreover, the changes induced by reservoirs joint operation may vastly exceed that by single reservoir operation. The smaller is the distance to the upstream reservoir, the more obvious is the impact from the reservoir.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agafonova SA, Frolova NL (2007) Specific features of ice regime in rivers of the Northern Dvina Basin. Water Resour 34(2):123–131
Ashton GD (1986) River and lake ice engineering. Water Resour, Littleton
Beltaos S, Burrell BC (2003) Climatic change and river ice breakup. Can J Civ Eng 30(1):145–155
Beltaos S, Prowse TD (2009) River-ice hydrology in a shrinking cryosphere. Hydrol Process 23:122–144
Choinski A, Kolendowicz L, Pociask-Karteczka J, Sobkowiak L (2010) Changes in lake ice cover on the Morskie Oko Lake in Poland (1971-007). Adv Clim Change Res 1:71–75
Fu G, Charles SP, Viney NR, Chen S, Wu JQ (2007) Impacts of climate variability on stream-flow in the Yellow River. Hydrol Process 21:3431–3439
Hodgkins GA, Dudley RW, Huntington TG (2005) Changes in the number and timing of days of ice-affected flow on northern New England rivers, 1930–2000. Clim Change 71:319–340
Huang MB, Zhang L (2004) Hydrological responses to conservation practices in a catchment of the Loess Plateau, China. Hydrol Process 18:1885–1898. doi:10.1002/hyp.1454
Jiang Y, Dong W, Yang S, Ma J (2008) Long-term changes in ice phenology of the Yellow River in the past decades. J Clim 21:4879–4886
Klavins M, Briede A, Rodinov V (2009) Long term changes in ice and discharge regime of rivers in the Baltic region in relation to climatic variability. Clim Change 95:485–498
Liang S, Ge S, Wan L, Zhang J (2010) Can climate change cause the Yellow River to dry up? Water Resour Res 46:W02505. doi:10.1029/2009WR007971
Liu F, Chen S, Dong P, Peng J (2012) Spatial and temporal variability of water discharge in the Yellow River Basin over the past 60 years. J Geogr Sci 22(6):1013–1033
Loader NJ, Jalkanen R, McCarrol D, Moberg A (2011) Spring temperature variability in northern Fennoscandia AD 1693-2011. J Quat Sci 26:566–570
Meilutyte-Barauskiene D, Kovalenkoviene M, Sarauskiene D (2005) The impact of run-off regulation on the thermal regime of the Nemunas. Environ Res Eng Manag 4(34):43–50
Morin S, Boucher E, Buffin-Belanger T (2015) The spatial variability of ice-jam bank morphologies along the Mistassini River (Quebec, Canada): an indicator of the ice-jam regime? Nat Hazards 77(3):2117–2138
Prowse TD, Beltaos S (2002) Climatic control of river-ice hydrology: a review. Hydrol Process 16(4):805–822
Radoane M, Ciaglic V, Radoane N (2010) Hydropower impact on ice jam formation on the upper Bistrita River, Romania. Cold Reg Sci Technol 60:193–204
Saito Y, Yan ZS, Hori K (2001) The Huanghe (Yellow River) and Changjiang (Yangtze River) deltas: a review on their characteristics, evolution and sediment discharge during the Holocene. Geomorphology 41:219–231
Shao XJ, Wang GQ (2002) The impact of upper Yellow River hydropower development on downstream fluvial processes. J Hydroelectr Eng 76:128–138
Smith LC (2000) Trends in Russian Arctic river-ice formation and breakup, 1917 to 1994. Phys Geogr 21(1):46–56
Starosolszky Ö (1990) Effect of river barrages on ice regime. J Hydraul Res 28(6):711–718
Ta WQ, Xiao HL, Dong ZB (2008) Long-term morphodynamic changes of a desert reach of the Yellow River following upstream large reservoirs’ operation. Geomorphology 97:249–259
Takács K, Kern Z, Nagy B (2013) Impacts of anthropogenic effects on river ice regime: examples from Eastern Central Europe. Quat Int 293:275–282. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2012.12.010
Vanacker V, Molina A, Govers G, Poesen J, Dercon G, Deckers S (2005) River channel response to short-term human-induced change in landscape connectivity in Andean ecosystems. Geomorphology 72:340–353
Wang T, Yang KL, Guo YX (2008) Application of Artificial Neural Networks to Forecasting Ice Conditions of the Yellow River in the Inner Mongolia Reach. J Hydroelectr Eng 13:811–816. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)1084-0699(2008)13:9(811)
Wu C-G, Wei Y-M, Jin J-L et al (2015) Comprehensive evaluation of ice disaster risk of the Ningxia–Inner Mongolia Reach in the upper Yellow River. Nat Hazards 75(2):179–197
Xu JX (2002) River sedimentation and channel adjustment of the lower Yellow River as influenced by low discharges and seasonal channel dry-ups. Geomorphology 43:151–164
Yang LF (1996) Ice regimes and its research on upstream of the Yellow River. In: Li G (Ed) Proceedings of the 13th IAHR international symposium on ice, held in Beijing, August 27–30. Chinese Hydraulic Engineering Society, vol II, Beijing, China, pp 707–714
Zhang Q, Singh VP, Sun P, Chen X, Zhang Z, Li J (2011) Precipitation and streamflow changes in China: changing patterns, causes and implications. J Hydrol 410:204–216
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (51179148, 51179149) and Key Innovation Group of Science and Technology of Shaanxi (2012KCT-10). Sincere gratitude is extended to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their professional comments and corrections.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chang, J., Wang, X., Li, Y. et al. Ice regime variation impacted by reservoir operation in the Ning-Meng reach of the Yellow River. Nat Hazards 80, 1015–1030 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-2010-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-2010-5