Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 6485–6499, 2017 https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-6485-2017 © Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Spatiotemporal response of the water cycle to land use conversions in a typical hilly–gully basin on the Loess Plateau, China Linjing Qiu1, Yiping Wu1, Lijing Wang1, Xiaohui Lei2, Weihong Liao2, Ying Hui3, and Xianyong Meng2 1Department of Earth and Environmental Science, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China 2State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing, China 3Meteorological Institute of Shaanxi Province, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China Correspondence: Yiping Wu (
[email protected]) Received: 17 June 2017 – Discussion started: 23 June 2017 Revised: 10 November 2017 – Accepted: 13 November 2017 – Published: 20 December 2017 Abstract. The hydrological effects of the “Grain for Green” able land use planning and water resource management on project (GFGP) on the Loess Plateau have been extensively the Loess Plateau in China. debated due to the complexity of the water system and its multiple driving factors. The aim of this study was to inves- tigate the response of the hydrological cycle to the GFGP measures based in a case study of the Yanhe Basin, a typ- 1 Introduction ical hilly–gully area on the Loess Plateau of China. First, we analyzed the land use and land cover (LULC) changes Land surface change is one of the most important drivers from 1990 to 2010.