Search

Climate change has become an environmental issue of utmost importance, and one that will challenge existing water resource management practices in many ways. The Huaihe River, one of China's major rivers, is frequently subject to flooding and drought and, for the purposes of assessing the implications of climate change on water resources in the Huaihe River Basin, the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model with a resolution of was calibrated using data from 11 well-gauged subbasins. The model parameters from the well-gauged stations were then transferred to poorly gauged areas according to similarities in, for example, climate conditions and soil texture. The calibrated VIC model was subsequently used to study the potential impacts of three climate change scenarios on basin runoff, taking projected runoff for 1961-1990 as the baseline. In general, the results showed that although the annual runoff will likely increase across the basin under the different scenarios, regional flooding and regional shortage in water resources will be exacerbated under the impacts of global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Runoff in major rivers in China has been decreasing in recent decades. The attribution of hydrologic variability to human activity or climate change is a challenging problem and an active research area. In this study, a sequential cluster analysis method was used to detect undisturbed parts of the record for the Kuyehe River catchment in China. The variable infiltration capacity (VIC) land-surface model was calibrated and verified using observed hydrometeorological data from a period with relatively little human-induced disturbance. The calibrated VIC model was then used to simulate natural runoff during the human-regulated period. Results indicate that the recorded runoff at Wenjiachuan station had significant decline trend of . Time series of runoff was detected and divided into three epochs at two critical years of 1980 and 1998. The VIC model performed well in simulating monthly discharges in the catchment, both Nash and Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) critera in calibration (1955 to 1969) and verification (1970 to 1979) were above 70% while relative errors (REs) were less than 5%. Human activity was the main driver behind 68% of the runoff reduction that occurred for the period of 1980 to 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]