Arid Zone Research ›› 2023, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (4): 605-614.doi: 10.13866/j.azr.2023.04.09

• Land and Water Resources • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Analysis of impact of human activities on runoff changes in Yue River Basin of the Qinling Mountains

DUAN Yujia1,2(),HE Yi1,2(),ZHAO Jie1,2,WU Qiong1,2   

  1. 1. College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Northwest University, Xi’an 710127, Shaanxi, China
    2. Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Earth Surface System and Environmental Carrying Capacity, Xi’an 710127, Shaanxi, China
  • Received:2022-03-29 Revised:2023-01-06 Online:2023-04-15 Published:2023-04-28

Abstract:

Climate change and human activities are the main driving forces of river runoff variation. Under the similar weather condition (SWC), human activities are the dominant factors for change of discharge in the basin that quantitative identification on the action mechanism of human activities on runoff change has great significance to further explore the change characteristics of runoff. This study was conducted in the Yue River basin of the Qinling Mountains. Combined with Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (LUCC) as well as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), human activities’ impacts on runoff is quantified by analyzing runoff changes in the Yue River basin with similar weather condition. The results show that: the average runoff value from 1960 to 2018 is 8.3×108 m3. The discharge shows a decreasing trend as a whole, and the change trend is not significant. Under the similar weather condition, this research obtains 6 paired-years. Among them, the annual runoff of 3 paired-years increased and that of 2 paired-years decreased. Taking the third paired-year (2000 and 2016) as an example to quantitatively distinguish the impact of climate change and human activities on runoff which reduced by 4.7×108 m3 in 2016 compared with 2000. In the third paired-year (2000 and 2016), 25751.4 hm2 of arable land was converted into forest land, and the forest land area increased by 24998.9 hm2. The NDVI change is mainly caused by human activities. The area increased by NDVI in 2016 was 242652.0 hm2 compared with that in 2000. The change trend of NDVI is opposite to that of runoff. This study can provide a theoretical basis for quantitative evaluation for human activities’ impact on river runoff changes within the Qinling Mountains.

Key words: Yue River Basin, human activities, similar weather condition, LUCC, NDVI