Groundwater storage trends in the Loess Plateau of China estimated from streamflow records

•Groundwater storage in the Loess Plateau were estimated from daily streamflow data.•Most catchments showed significant downward trends in annual groundwater storage.•Storage trends were related to changes in land cover and sea surface temperature. The catchments in the Loess Plateau in China have e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of hydrology (Amsterdam) 2015-11, Vol.530, p.281-290
Main Authors: Gao, Zhaoliang, Zhang, Lu, Cheng, Lei, Zhang, Xiaoping, Cowan, Tim, Cai, Wenju, Brutsaert, Wilfried
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Base flow
Catchments
Climate
Climate change
Groundwater
Groundwater storage
Land use change
Loess
Marine
Oscillations
Soil conservation
Trends
Water runoff
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Summary:•Groundwater storage in the Loess Plateau were estimated from daily streamflow data.•Most catchments showed significant downward trends in annual groundwater storage.•Storage trends were related to changes in land cover and sea surface temperature. The catchments in the Loess Plateau in China have experienced significant land use change since the 1950s with a great number of soil conservation measures such as revegetation being implemented. Such soil conservation measures and climate variability have had considerable impacts on annual streamflow from these catchments. However, much less is known about changes in groundwater storage as the period of direct groundwater storage measurements is too short to reliably infer groundwater storage trends. For this study, annual values of groundwater storage from 38 catchments in the Loess Plateau were estimated from daily streamflow records based on groundwater flow theory. It was found that over the period of record (viz. 1955–2010), statistically significant (p
ISSN:0022-1694
1879-2707
DOI:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.09.063