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Drought–flood variation and its correlation with runoff in three headstreams of Tarim River, Xinjiang, China

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Abstract

The Tarim River lies in the inland area of Northwest China, which has a semiarid or arid climate. Because of relatively scarce precipitation in this area, the main water resource is runoff from a mountainous drainage basin. It is very important to ascertain variations of regular hydrologic and meteorological time series data. Through the use of monthly precipitation and hydrologic data in the three headstream mountain areas of the Tarim River over the past 50 years, this work analyzes the variation of a drought–flood index and annual runoff volume, along with spatio-temporal structures of the index related to runoff at multiple time scales, via non-parametric testing and a wavelet transform method. Wavelet transform can clearly demonstrate many characteristics of the time series, including trend, shift, and major periods. Based on the analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn: (1) the drought–flood indices showed increasing trends for the Aksu and Yarkand rivers, and rose non-significantly for Hotan River. The indices of the three headstreams changed remarkably (p < 0.05) in 1986. The curves of wavelet variance show that significant periods of the indices are 4 and 8 years for Aksu and Hotan rivers, and 8 and 10 years for Yarkand River; (2) runoff of the Aksu and Hotan rivers had significant periods of 6 and 8 years, plus 3 and 9 years for Hotan River; (3) there was significant correlation between the drought–flood indices and annual runoff volume in the three headstreams. The results provide important information toward achieving predictability of flood and drought in Northwest China.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation (41171427 and 41001066), National Basic Research Program of China (Program 973) (No. 2009CB421308) and Ministry of Water Resources’ Special Funds for Scientific Research on Public Causes (No. 201101049).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, 830011, China

    Yuan Bai, Hailiang Xu & Hongbo Ling

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yuan Bai & Hongbo Ling

Authors
  1. Yuan Bai
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  2. Hailiang Xu
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  3. Hongbo Ling
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Correspondence to Hailiang Xu.

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Bai, Y., Xu, H. & Ling, H. Drought–flood variation and its correlation with runoff in three headstreams of Tarim River, Xinjiang, China. Environ Earth Sci 71, 1297–1309 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-013-2534-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-013-2534-5

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