Separation of the Impact of Landuse/Landcover Change and Climate Change on Runoff in the Upstream Area of the Yangtze River, China

Naveed Ahmed (), Genxu Wang (), Martijn J. Booij (), Sun Xiangyang (), Fiaz Hussain () and Ghulam Nabi ()
Additional contact information
Naveed Ahmed: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Genxu Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Martijn J. Booij: University of Twente
Sun Xiangyang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Fiaz Hussain: National Central University
Ghulam Nabi: University of Engineering and Technology

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2022, vol. 36, issue 1, No 11, 201 pages

Abstract: Abstract Landuse/landcover change (LULCC) and climate change (CC) impacts on streamflow in high elevated catchments are very important for sustainable management of water resources and ecological developments. In this research, a statistical technique was used in combination with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to the Upstream Area of the Yangtze River (UAYR). Different performance criteria (e.g., R2, NSE, and PBIAS) were used to evaluate the acceptability of the model simulation results. The model provided satisfactory results for monthly simulations in the calibration (R2; 0.80, NSE; 0.78 and PBIAS; 22.3%) and the validation period (R2; 0.89, NSE; 0.75 and PBIAS; 19.1%). Major landuse/landcover transformations from 1990 to 2005 have occurred from low grassland to medium grassland (2%) and wetlands (0.9%), bare land to medium grassland (0.2%), glaciers to wetland (16.8%), and high grassland to medium grassland (5.8%). The results show that there is an increase in average annual runoff at the Zhimenda station in UAYR by 15 mm of, which approximately 98% is caused by climate change and only 2% by landuse/landcover change. The changes evapotranspiration are larger due to climate change as compared to landuse/landcover change, particularly from August to October. Precipitation and temperature have increased during these months. On the contrary, there has been a decrease in evapotranspiration and runoff from October to March which depicts the intra-annual variations in the vegetation in the study area.

Keywords: Climate change; Land cover; Land use change; Mann Kendall; Qinghai Tibet; SWAT model; Yangtze River (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11269-021-03021-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:36:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s11269-021-03021-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-021-03021-z

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().