Journal
PROGRESS IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY-EARTH AND ENVIRONMENT
Volume 34, Issue 4, Pages 541-561Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/0309133310369434
Keywords
climate change; discharge; human activity; reservoir; sediment load; Yellow River
Funding
- National Key Basic Special Foundation Project of China [2007CB407202]
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [20090450221]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [50979003]
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The Yellow River basin contributes approximately 6% of the sediment load from all river systems globally, and the annual runoff directly supports 12% of the Chinese population. As a result, describing and understanding recent variations of water discharge and sediment load under global change scenarios are of considerable importance. The present study considers the annual hydrologic series of the water discharge and sediment load of the Yellow River basin obtained from 15 gauging stations (10 mainstream, 5 tributaries). The Mann-Kendall test method was adopted to detect both gradual and abrupt change of hydrological series since the 1950s. With the exception of the area draining to the Upper Tangnaihai station, results indicate that both water discharge and sediment load have decreased significantly (p<0.05). The declining trend is greater with distance downstream, and drainage area has a significant positive effect on the rate of decline. It is suggested that the abrupt change of the water discharge from the late 1980s to the early 1990s arose from human extraction, and that the abrupt change in sediment load was linked to disturbance from reservoir construction.
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