Changes in Rainfall and Flood Characteristics under Nonstationarity in a Mountain Basin of Northwest China
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 28, Issue 5
Abstract
Nonstationarity in hydrology has aroused great concern among people, and various influence factors have been proved to challenge the assumptions of the traditional hydrological analysis. For the selection of a reasonable flood frequency model and rationality of hydraulic engineering design, it is of great significance to study the variation characteristics of rainfall and floods and their relationship under the nonstationary condition. Taking the Yue River Basin, a mountain basin in northwest China, as an example, the nonparametric Mann-Kendall test and moving -test methods were used to test the temporal trends and mutation of hydrological variables during the recent 53 years. The recession curve was derived from the historical flood series by the genetic algorithm, and the flood hydrographs were separated by the constant-slope base flow separation method. The results showed that the annual rainfall and runoff in the Yue River Basin during the recent 53 years exhibited insignificant increasing and decreasing trends, respectively. The abrupt change point of annual runoff series occurred in 1985. The average proportion of underground runoff changed from 21% before 1985 to 17% after 1985, and the relationship between rainfall and floods became weakened after 1985, indicating that the stationarity of flood was challenged.
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Data Availability Statement
The information on hydrological stations is not available online currently, which has been issued in the form of hydrological yearbooks and can be found in hydrological institutions or university libraries. According to reasonable requirements, the MATLAB code of the recession curve derived from the genetic algorithm in this study can be obtained by contacting the e-mail: [email protected].
Acknowledgments
This study is jointly supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2021YFC3201502 and 2021YFC3201104), Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality (Grant No. 8202030), and the 111 Project (B18006).
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Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 28 • Issue 5 • May 2023
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© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 22, 2020
Accepted: Jan 5, 2023
Published online: Mar 10, 2023
Published in print: May 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Aug 10, 2023
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