Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Assessing the impact of human activities and rainfall variability on the river discharge of Komadugu-Yobe Basin, Lake Chad Area

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Environmental Earth Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The impact of human activities and rainfall variability on river discharge is of main concern for policymakers in the Komadugu-Yobe Basin (KYB), Lake Chad area. The KYB is of strategic importance because its rivers contribute significantly to the recharge of Lake Chad whose shrinkage has been of concern to policymakers and the international society. This study investigates the variations in river discharge of the KYB as a result of the contributory effects of rainfall variability and human influences, using daily rainfall and discharge data between 1971 and 2013. In order to partition the impacts of rainfall variability and human activities on river discharge, breakpoints related to abrupt environmental changes caused by human activities are identified using the generalized variance (GV), double mass curve (DMC) and the wavelet spectral methods. Breakpoints are found in 1974 and 1993, which correspond to times when major dams in the basin became operational. These breakpoints may also be related to LULC changes. The land-use land-cover (LULC) analysis shows an increase in bare surface, plantation, settlements and water bodies from 1975 to 2013, in association with a decrease in the forest and grassland coverage. Overall, the mean discharge between the pre-break and post-break periods increased by 24%. This increment in discharge was caused by approximately 50% rainfall variability and 50% human activities. Hence, the effects of human activities appear to be as important as the effect of natural rainfall variability on the river discharge changes in the KYB.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Acquaotta F, Fratianni S (2014) The importance of the quality and reliability of the historical time series for the study of climate change. Revista Brasileira de Meteorologia 10:20–38

    Google Scholar 

  • Adams WM (1993) Indigenous use of wetlands and sustainable development in West Africa. Geog J 159(2):209–218

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Adeyeri OE, Lawin EA, Laux P, Ishola KA, Ige SO (2019a) Analysis of climate extreme indices over the Komadugu-Yobe basin, Lake Chad region: Past and future occurrences. Weather Clim Extremes 23:100194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2019.100194

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Adeyeri OE, Laux P, Lawin AE, Ige SO, Kunstmann H (2019b) Analysis of Hydrometeorological Variables over the transboundary Komadugu-Yobe Basin, West Africa. J Water Clim Change. https://doi.org/10.2166/wcc.2019.283

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Adeyeri OE, Lamptey BL, Lawin AE, Sanda I (2017a) Spatio-temporal precipitation trend and homogeneity analysis in Komadugu-Yobe Basin, Lake Chad Region. J Climatol Weather Forecast 5:214. https://doi.org/10.4172/2332-2594.1000214

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Adeyeri OE, Akinsanola AA, Ishola KA (2017b) Investigating surface urban heat island characteristics over Abuja, Nigeria: relationship between land surface temperature and multiple vegetation indices. Remote Sens Appl Soc Environ 7:57–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2017.06.005

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Awotwi A, Anornu GK, Quaye-Ballard J, Annor T, Forkuo EK (2017) Analysis of climate and human impacts on runoff in the Lower Pra River Basin of Ghana. Heliyon 3(12):e00477. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2017.e00477

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bao-Qi L, Wei-Hua X, Yi-Cheng W, Ming-Zhi Y, Ya H (2018) Impact of land use/cover change on the relationship between precipitation and runoff in typical area. J Water Clim Change 9(2):261–274

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buma WG, Lee SIL, Seo JY (2016) Hydrological evaluation of Lake Chad basin using space borne and hydrological model observations. Water (Switzerland). https://doi.org/10.3390/w8050205

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chien H, Yeh PJ, Knouft JH (2013) Modeling the potential impacts of climate change on streamflow in agricultural watersheds of the Midwestern United States. J Hydrol 491:73–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2013.03.026

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheng C, Cheng H (2008) Identifying the source of variance shifts in the multivariate process using neural networks and support vector machines. Expert Sys App 35:198–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2007.06.002

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheng Y, He H, Cheng HW (2016) The effects of climate and anthropogenic activity on hydrologic features in Yanhe River. Adv in Met 2016:1–11. https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/5297158

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cotillon SE (2017) West Africa land use and land cover time series. US Geo Survey Fact Sheet (No. 2017–3004, pp. 1–4). https://doi.org/10.3133/fs20173004

  • Destouni G, Jaramillo F, Prieto C (2013) Hydroclimatic shifts driven by human water use for food and energy production. Nat Clim Change 3:213–217. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1719

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Domonkos P, Coll J (2017) Homogenisation of temperature and precipitation time series with ACMANT3: method description and efficiency tests. Int J Climatol 37:1910–1921

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Donders TH, Wagner F, Visscher H (2005) Quantification strategies for human-induced and natural hydrological changes in wetland vegetation, southern Florida, USA. Quater Res 64(3):333–342

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gao P, Mu XM, Wang F, Li R (2011) Changes in streamflow and sediment discharge and the response to human activities in the middle reaches of the Yellow River. Hydrol Earth Syst Sc 15(1):1–10

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guo Y, Li Z, Amo-Boateng M, Deng P, Huang P (2014) Quantitative assessment of the impact of climate variability and human activities on runoff changes for the upper reaches of Weihe River. Stoch Env Res Risk A 28(2):333–346

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gupta AS (2014) Generalized variance. In: Balakrishnan N, Colton T, Everitt B, Piegorsch W, Ruggeri F, Teugels JL (eds) Wiley StatsRef: Statistics Reference Online. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118445112.stat01987

  • Hao FH, Chen LQ, Liu CM, Dai D (2004) Impact of land use change on runoff and sediment yield. J Soil Water Conser 18(3):5–8

    Google Scholar 

  • Hundecha Y, Bárdossy A (2004) Modeling the effect of land use changes on the runoff generation of a river basin through parameter regionalization of a watershed model. J Hydrol 292:281–295

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IUCN (2011) Komadugu Yobe Basin, upstream of Lake Chad, Nigeria. Multi-stakeholder participation to create new institutions and legal frameworks to manage water resources. https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/2011-097.pdf. Accessed 18 Aug 2018

  • Jia YW, Zhao HL, Niu CW, Jiang YZ, Gan H, Xing Z, Zhao XL, Zhao ZX (2009) A WebGIS-based system for rainfall-runoff prediction and real-time water resources assessment for Beijing. Comput Geosci 35(7):1517–1528

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Legesse D, Vallet-Coulomb C, Gasse F (2003) Hydrological response of a catchment to climate and land use changes in Tropical Africa: case study South Central Ethiopia. J Hydrol 275(1):67–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li J, Shi W (2015) Effects of alpine swamp wetland change on rainfall season runoff and flood characteristics in the headwater area of the Yangtze River. CATENA 127:116–123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li KY, Coe MT, Ramankutty N, De Jong R (2007) Modelling the hydrological impact of landuse change in West Africa. J Hydrol 337:258–268

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li WH, He YT, Yang LT (2001) A summary and perspective of forest vegetation impacts on water yield. Nat Resour 16(5):398–406

    Google Scholar 

  • Mohamad I, Markus M (2009) Impacts of urbanization and climate variability on floods in northeastern Illinois. J Hydrol Eng 14(6):606–616

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Muhammad JC, Yahaya DK, Abba JG (2015) Water management Issues in the Hadejia Jama’are-Komadugu-Yobe Basin: DFID-JWL and Stakeholders Experience in Information Sharing, Reaching Consensus and Physical Interventions. 16:369–381. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6764774.pdf

  • Murtaugh PA (2014) defense of p-values. Ecology 95(3):611–617

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nicholson SE (2001) Climatic and environmental change in Africa during the last two centuries. Climate Res 17:123–144

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oyebande L (2001) Stream flow regime change and ecological response in the Lake Chad Basin in Nigeria. In: Acreman, M (ed.) Hydro-ecology: Linking hydrology to Aquatic Ecology. Int assoc hydrol science 226:101

  • Parsons WT, Cuthbertson EG (1992) Noxious Weeds of Australia. Inkata Press, Melbourne, p 692

    Google Scholar 

  • Qiu L, Peng D, Xu Z, Liu W (2016) Identification of the impacts of climate changes and human activities on runoff in the upper and middle reaches of the Heihe River basin, China. J Water Clim Change 7(1):251–262

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Searcy JK, Hardison CH (1960) Double-mass curves. U.S. Geological Survey Water Supply Paper 1541-BManuel of Hydrology: Part 1. General Surface-Water Techniques, pp. 41. Accessed 14 Dec 2016 https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/1541b/report.pdf.

  • Shepard D (1968) A two-dimensional interpolation function for irregularly-spaced data. In: Blue RB, Rosenberg AM (eds.), the 1968 23rd ACM national conference, pp. 517–524

  • Spracklen DV, Arnold SR, Taylor CM (2012) Observations of increased tropical rainfall preceded by air passage over forests. Nature 489(7415):282–285

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tafida AA, Galtima M (2016) An assessment of rural household vulnerability in the Hadejia Nguru Wetlands region, Northeastern Nigeria. J Glob Initiat 10:109–124

    Google Scholar 

  • Tang J, Yin XA, Yang P, Yang Z (2014) Assessment of contributions of climatic variation and human activities to streamflow changes in the Lancang River. China Water Resour Manag 28(10):2953–2966

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tuteja NK, Vaze J, Teng J, Mutendeudzi M (2007) Partitioning the effects of pine plantations and climate variability on runoff from a large catchment in southeastern Australia. Water Resour Res 43:199–212. https://doi.org/10.1029/2006WR005016

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Umar AS, Ankidawa BA (2016) Climate variability and basin management: a threat to and from wetlands of Komadugu Yobe Basin, North Eastern Nigeria. Asian J Eng Tech 4(2):25–36

    Google Scholar 

  • USGS (2012) Famine early warning systems network-informing climate change adaptation series. A climate trend analysis of Niger. Fact Sheet pp: 2012–3080

  • Veleda D, Montagne R, Araujo M (2012) Cross-wavelet bias corrected by normalizing scales. Atmos Ocean Techn 29:1401–1408

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang D, Hejazi M (2011) Quantifying the relative contribution of the climate and direct human impacts on mean annual streamflow in the contiguous United States. Water Resour Res 47(10):1–16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xu Y, Wang S, Bai X, Shu D, Tian Y (2018) Runoff response to climate change and human activities in a typical karst watershed SW China. PLoS ONE 13(3):e0193073. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193073

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang X, Yang F (2004) RClimDex (1.0) User manual, climate research branch environment, Ontario, Canada. https://etccdi.pacificclimate.org/software.shtml, Accessed 13 Mar 2017

  • Zhang A, Zhang C, Fu G et al (2012) Assessments of impacts of climate change and human activities on runoff with SWAT for the Huifa River Basin. Northeast China Water Resour Manag 26(8):2199–2217

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

The first author was supported by the doctoral scholarship from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL). The authors wish to acknowledge the Direction de la Meteorologie Nationale (DMN) of Niger Republic, the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMet) for providing data used in this study. Oyekan Kayode is also acknowledged for providing the software used for the analysis. The anonymous reviewers are duly acknowledged.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use, University of Abomey-Calavi, Calavi, Benin

    O. E. Adeyeri

  2. Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research Atmospheric Environmental Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Campus Alpine, Karlsruhe, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

    O. E. Adeyeri, P. Laux & J. Arnault

  3. Laboratory of Applied Hydrology, National Water Institute, University of Abomey-Calavi, Calavi, Benin

    A. E. Lawin

Authors
  1. O. E. Adeyeri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. P. Laux
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. A. E. Lawin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. J. Arnault
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to O. E. Adeyeri.

Ethics declarations

Competing of interests

The authors have read and understood the policy on declaration of interests and declare that we have no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Adeyeri, O.E., Laux, P., Lawin, A.E. et al. Assessing the impact of human activities and rainfall variability on the river discharge of Komadugu-Yobe Basin, Lake Chad Area. Environ Earth Sci 79, 143 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-020-8875-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-020-8875-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation