Investigation into the Impacts of Land-Use Change on Runoff Generation Characteristics in the Upper Huaihe River Basin, China
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 11
Abstract
Land-use change has significant impacts on hydrologic processes at the watershed level; thus, quantitative assessment on the impacts of land-use change is vital for basin environment protection and water resources sustainable development. Owing largely to computer and geographical information system (GIS) technology improvements, the distributed hydrological models, which allow describing the temporal variability and spatial distribution of water-balance components, offer an effective approach to quantify the land-use change effects on watershed water quantity. In this study, a soil and water assessment tool model was used to simulate land-use change effects on water quantity in the upper Huaihe River basin in China above the Xixian hydrological controlling station with a catchment area of by the use of temporal three-phase (1980s, 1990s, 2000s) land-use maps, soil type map (1:200,000 scale), and 1980–2008 daily time series of rainfall from the upper Huaihe River basin. Within the model, potential evapotranspiration was computed using the Penman-Monteith method coupled with a simplified plant growth model. On the basis of the simulated time series of daily runoff, land-use change effects on spatio-temporal change patterns of runoff coefficients and runoff modules, the rainfall-runoff relationship, the sensitivity of rainfall-runoff relationship to rainfall for different types of land use, and impact of land-use patterns on rainfall-runoff relationships were investigated. The results revealed that under the same condition of soil texture and terrain slope, the advantage for runoff generation and the sensitivity of rainfall-runoff relationship to rainfall decreased by farmland, paddy field, and woodland. With the same rainfall, the advantage for runoff generation increased by the 1990s, 2000s, and 1980s land-use patterns. The outputs could provide important references for soil and water conservation and river health protection in the upper stream reach of the Huaihe River.
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Acknowledgments
Financial support is gratefully acknowledged from a research project (41171220) funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in the University under Grant No. IRT0717, Ministry of Education, China, and the 111 Project under Grant B08048.
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18 • Issue 11 • November 2013
Pages: 1464 - 1470
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 10, 2010
Accepted: Aug 5, 2011
Published online: Aug 8, 2011
Discussion open until: Jan 8, 2012
Published in print: Nov 1, 2013
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