Quantitative assessment of the impacts of climate change and human activities on runoff change in a typical karst watershed, SW China

• Published in: The Science of the total environment 2017-12, Vol.601-602, p.1449-1465
• Main Authors: Wu, Luhua, Wang, Shijie, Bai, Xiaoyong, Luo, Weijun, Tian, Yichao, Zeng, Cheng, Luo, Guangjie, He, Shiyan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: China; Climate Change; Contribution; Environmental Monitoring; Human Activities; Humans; Karst; Land use; Rivers; Runoff; Water Movements
• ISSN: 0048-9697; 1879-1026
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.288

The Yinjiang River watershed is a typical karst watershed in Southwest China. The present study explored runoff change and its responses to different driving factors in the Yinjiang River watershed over the period of 1984 to 2015. The methods of cumulative anomaly, continuous wavelet analysis, Mann-Kendall rank correlation trend test, and Hurst exponent were applied to analyze the impacts of climate change and human activities on runoff change. The contributions of climate change and human activities to runoff change were quantitatively assessed using the comparative method of the slope changing ratio of cumulative quantity (SCRCQ). The following results were obtained: (1) From 1984 to 2015, runoff and precipitation exhibited no-significant increasing trend, whereas evaporation exhibited significant decreasing trend. (2) In the future, runoff, precipitation, and evaporation will exhibit weak anti-persistent feature with different persistent times. This feature indicated that in their persistent times, runoff and precipitation will continuously decline, whereas evaporation will continuously increase. (3) Runoff and precipitation were well-synchronized with abrupt change features and stage characteristics, and exhibited consistent multi-timescale characteristics that were different from that of evaporation. (4) The contribution of precipitation to runoff change was 50%–60% and was considered high and stable. The contribution of evaporation to runoff change was 10%–90% and was variable with a positive or negative effects. The contribution of human activities to runoff change was 20%–60% and exerted a low positive or negative effect. (5) Climatic factors highly contributed to runoff change. By contrast, the contribution of human activities to runoff change was low. The contribution of climatic factors to runoff change was highly variable because of differences among base periods. In conclusion, this paper provides a basic theoretical understanding of the main factors that contribute to runoff change in a karst watershed. [Display omitted] •We evaluated the impact of climate change and human activities on runoff changes.•Climatic factors highly contributed to runoff change.•The impact of precipitation on runoff change was stable.•The contribution of human activities to runoff change was low.•We provided a understanding of the main factors that contribute to runoff change.