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Quantifying the Relative Contribution of Climate and Human Impacts on Runoff Change Based on the Budyko Hypothesis and SVM Model

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Abstract

The Wei River Basin (WRB), the largest tributary of the Yellow River in China, has experienced a noticeable decrease in annual runoff during the last 50 years. Quantifying the relative contributions of climate change and human activities on runoff changes is thus important for local water resources management and sustainable water resources utilizations. In this study, the heuristic segmentation method was first adopted to detect the change points of annual runoff at Linjiacun and Huaxian stations which lies in the middle and lower reaches of the basin, respectively. Then, the Budyko hypothesis and SVM-based model were applied to attribute the detected runoff changes to climate change and human activities. Results showed that: (1) two change points were detected for the annual runoff at the Linjiacun station (1971 and 1993), and Huaxian station (1969 and 1993); (2) based on the Budyko hypothesis, the relative contributions of climate change and human activities to runoff changes at Linjiacun and Huaxian stations are 42.2 %, 57.8 % and 30.5 %, 69.8 %, respectively, whilst those based on the SVM-based model are 45.3 %, 54.7 % and 34.7 %, 65.3 %, respectively. The high consistence between the two approaches indicates that human activities are the dominate factor on historical runoff changes in the WRB.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by National Department Public Benefit Research Foundation of Ministry of Water Resources (201501058) and the National Major Fundamental Research Program (2011CB403306-2). Sincere gratitude is extended to editor and anonymous reviewers for their professional comments and corrections, which greatly improved the presentation of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory Base of Eco-Hydraulic Engineering in Arid Area, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an, 710048, China

    Shengzhi Huang, Jianxia Chang, Qiang Huang & Yutong Chen

  2. Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, MD, 20740, USA

    Guoyong Leng

Authors
  1. Shengzhi Huang
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  2. Jianxia Chang
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  3. Qiang Huang
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  4. Yutong Chen
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  5. Guoyong Leng
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Correspondence to Shengzhi Huang.

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Huang, S., Chang, J., Huang, Q. et al. Quantifying the Relative Contribution of Climate and Human Impacts on Runoff Change Based on the Budyko Hypothesis and SVM Model. Water Resour Manage 30, 2377–2390 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-016-1286-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-016-1286-x

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