Recent anthropogenic curtailing of Yellow River runoff and sediment load is unprecedented over the past 500 y

The Yellow River (YR) is the fifth-longest and the most sedimentladen river in the world. Frequent historical YR flooding events, however, have resulted in tremendous loss of life and property, whereas in recent decades YR runoff and sediment load have fallen sharply. To put these recent changes in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2020-08, Vol.117 (31), p.18251-18257
Main Authors: Liu, Yu, Song, Huiming, An, Zhisheng, Sun, Changfeng, Trouet, Valerie, Cai, Qiufang, Liu, Ruoshi, Leavitt, Steven W., Song, Yi, Li, Qiang, Fang, Congxi, Zhou, Weijian, Yang, Yinke, Jin, Zhao, Wang, Yunqiang, Sun, Junyan, Mu, Xingmin, Lei, Ying, Wang, Lu, Li, Xuxiang, Ren, Meng, Cui, Linlin, Zeng, Xueli
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural management
Agricultural runoff
Anthropogenic factors
China
Drought
Environmental Monitoring
Flooding
Fluvial sediments
Geologic Sediments
Human Activities
Human influences
Humans
Models, Theoretical
Physical Sciences
Reduction
River flow
Rivers
Runoff
Sediment load
Sediments
Tree rings
Water allocation
Water consumption
Water Movements
Water Pollutants, Chemical
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Summary:The Yellow River (YR) is the fifth-longest and the most sedimentladen river in the world. Frequent historical YR flooding events, however, have resulted in tremendous loss of life and property, whereas in recent decades YR runoff and sediment load have fallen sharply. To put these recent changes in a longer-term context, we reconstructed natural runoff for the middle reach of the YR back to 1492 CE using a network of 31 moisture-sensitive treering width chronologies. Prior to anthropogenic interference that started in the 1960s, the lowest natural runoff over the past 500 y occurred during 1926 to 1932 CE, a drought period that can serve as a benchmark for future planning of YR water allocation. Since the late 1980s, the low observed YR runoff has exceeded the natural range of runoff variability, a consequence of the combination of decreasing precipitation and increasing water consumption by direct and indirect human activities, particularly agricultural irrigation. This reduced runoff has resulted in an estimated 58% reduction of the sediment load in the upper reach of the YR and 29% reduction in the middle reach.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1922349117