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Trends in Runoff Versus Climate Change in Typical Rivers in the Arid Region of Northwest China

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Trends in Runoff Versus Climate Change in Typical Rivers in the Arid Region of Northwest China Quaternary International xxx (2012) 1e9 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint Trends in runoff versus climate change in typical rivers in the arid region of northwest China Baofu Li a,b, Yaning Chen a,*, Zhongsheng Chen a, Weihong Li a a State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China b Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China article info abstract Article history: To clarify runoff and climate change trends and its relation in typical rivers in the arid region of Available online xxx northwest China (ANC), this study takes the runoff and meteorological data of 11 rivers in 5 typical river areas from mountain-pass as the research objects. The ManneKendall test, Extrapolation of Variance Analysis of Time-series Period and Correlation Analysis Method are applied to analyze the temporal and spatial variations of climate and runoff. The results show that in the past 50 years, the temperature, precipitation and runoff in the each river area exhibited an upward tendency. However, the runoff from the south slope of Altai Mountains and the north slope of Kunlun Mountains and the precipitation on the north slope of Qilian Mountains, the north slope of Kunlun Mountains and the south slope of Tianshan Mountains show inconspicuous changes. The increasing rates of temperature and precipitation in the river area of Northern Xinjiang is the largest, an average of 0.44 C/10a and 15.39 mm/10a; followed by that in the river area of Hexi Corridor, 0.29 C/10a and 7.64 mm/10a. The lowest one is in the river area of Southern Xinjiang, only 0.24 C/10a and 5.50 mm/10a. However, the increasing rate of runoff is the slowest in Northern Xinjiang while that in Southern Xinjiang is the fastest, mainly related to runoff recharge difference. The runoff recharge proportions from glaciers and precipitation have great effects on the relation between runoff and temperature and precipitation. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction change on agriculture in semi-arid regions. Cueto et al. (2010) studied the climate change trend of urban areas in arid regions. Nowadays, climate change is a hot topic of scientific research, Recently, the regional climate change and the impact of different which results in hydrological and water resource changes, and underlying surfaces have been investigated (Krol and Bronstert, therefore researchers pay great attention to climate change 2007; Cabre et al., 2010; Mahlstein and Knutti, 2010; Samuels (Barnett et al., 2005; Chen and Xu, 2005; Shen and Chen, 2010; Xu et al., 2010; Bukovsky and Karoly, 2011; Chen et al., 2011; Roy et al., 2010). The changes in processes of hydrology and water et al., 2011). Most studies mainly focused on runoff and its influ- resources and the climate conditions are sensitive to global climate ence factors in rivers (Wang and Meng, 2008; Chen et al., 2010, change in arid regions (Stewart et al., 2004). Shi and Zhang (1995) 2011; Xu et al., 2010; Chen et al., 2011; Xu et al., 2011). However, analyzed climate change in the arid region of northwest China and there has been little research on comparative analysis of runoff found a gradual tendency to warmer and wetter climate. Chen et al. change trends in several rivers. (2010) and Xu et al. (2010, 2011) stated that climate change had The main driving factors of runoff include climate changes and a significant impact on water resources of a typical basin in the arid human factors (Zhang et al., 2011). The arid region of northwest region, but they did not make a comparative analysis on water China has a large area, small population, more deserts and fewer resources in different rivers. Ding et al. (2006) explored glacier oases. Temperature and precipitation have significant effects on change trends under the condition of climate change, which maintaining runoff in the inland river area (Rauscher et al., 2008; Li resulted in glacial retreat and increased glacial melt water runoff. et al., 2010; Zhou et al., 2010). In addition, climate changes in Al-Bakri et al. (2011) discussed the impact of regional climate different regions and their impacts on the runoff of river are not consistent (Bergstrom et al., 2001; Arnell et al., 2003). Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the temperature and precipitation changes * Corresponding author. in different regions and their impacts on runoff. Taking the main E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Chen). typical basin in northwest China as study subject, this study 1040-6182/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2012.06.005 Please cite this article in press as: Li, B., et al., Trends in runoff versus climate change in typical rivers in the arid region of northwest China, Quaternary International (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2012.06.005 2 B. Li et al. / Quaternary International xxx (2012) 1e9 presents a comparative analysis on temperature, precipitation and The weather station data is maintained according to the stan- runoff changes in each river since 1957, which is expected to lay dard methods of the National Meteorological Administration of a scientific basis for sustainable use of water resources in ANC. China, having high-quality data, with data quality control (including extreme inspection and time consistency checks) before releasing these data. The runoff data in each river is derived from 2. Material and methods local Hydrology Bureaus. 2.1. Material 2.2. Methods The arid region of northwest China is located in the hinterland of 2.2.1. ManneKendall test the Eurasian continent, the vast region in the western Helan The ManneKendall non-parametric statistical test (Mann, 1945; Mountain-Zaocys Ridge line and northern Kunlun Mountains Kendall,1975) was adopted to analyze air temperature, precipitation (Fig. 1), including the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the and runoff trends in the past 50 years. The testing method is used to Midwest Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and most areas of estimate time-series trend without sample following a certain Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Hexi Corridor in Gansu distribution, which is applied widely for trend analysis (Yue et al., province, which is about 2.5 million km2, accounting for over 25% of 2002). In the method, H0 represents Distribution of random vari- the area of China. The area with sunshine and strong radiation has ables, and H1 represents possibility of bi-directional changes. S as very abundant solar energy resources. As a rule, the solar radiation Kendall’s statistic is described by the following equation: is 5400e6300 MJ/(m2 a). Annual sunshine is 2500e3000 h in the area, even up to 3549 h in Xingxingxia adjacent to Gansu and XnÀ1 Xn Xinjiang. The high photosynthetic productive potential is condu- ¼ ð À Þ S sgn xk xi (1) cive to the use of solar energy. However, the area belongs to typical i ¼ 1 k ¼ iþ1 arid eco-fragile area due to water resources shortage, widespread ¼ .. À desertification, and sparse vegetation. Annual rainfall is less than xi denotes a time-series from i 1, 2 .n 1, and xj denotes ¼ þ . 300 mm on average, gradually decreasing from east to west. another time-series from j i 1, , n, which each point xi is used In this paper, the research objects are 11 rivers of five typical as a reference point of xj, using the following equation: river areas in three typical areas in ANC (Table 1), including 8 < 1; q>0 northern Xinjiang (the south slope of Altai Maintains, the north sgnðqÞ¼ 0; q ¼ 0 (2) slope of Tianshan Mountains), southern Xinjiang (the north slope of : À1; q < 0 Kunlun Mountains, the south slope of Tianshan Mountains) and the Hexi Corridor (the north slope of Qilian Mountains), which basically If the dataset is completely independent, it is S ¼ 0. S0 is calcu- cover the main inland rivers in ANC (Fig. 1). To minimize the impact lated as follows: of human activities and make the regional climate changes clear, " #, under the premise of available data, the selected hydrological X ½ ¼ ð À Þð þ Þ ð À Þð þ Þ station data represent runoff from mountain-passes in each river var S n n 1 2n 5 t t 1 2t 5 18 (3) t and the selected weather station data represent climate changes of each mountains area. The mean values of weather and hydrological n denotes the length of the dataset or the number of years in the stations data are used to represent runoff, temperature, and dataset, t denotes the extent of any given tie, S denotes the sum of precipitation. all the “knot”. Fig. 1. Meteorological and hydrological stations of rivers in the arid region of northwest China. Please cite this article in press as: Li, B., et al., Trends in runoff versus climate change in typical rivers in the arid region of northwest China, Quaternary International (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2012.06.005 B. Li et al. / Quaternary International xxx (2012) 1e9 3 Table 1 Rivers, meteorological and hydrological stations in the arid region of northwest China. Areas Typical river areas Rivers Weather stations (Information sessions) Hydrological stations (Information sessions) Hexi Corridor The north slope of Qilian Mountains Heihe River Qilian (1957e2010) Yingluoxia (1957e2009) Shiyang River Wushaoling (1957e2010) Zamusi (1957e2009) Shule River Tuole (1957e2010) Changmabao (1957e2009) Northern Xinjiang The south slope of Altai Mountains Kelan
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