IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0091048.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Temporal Variation of Streamflow, Sediment Load and Their Relationship in the Yellow River Basin, China

Author

Listed:
  • Guangju Zhao
  • Xingmin Mu
  • Alex Strehmel
  • Peng Tian

Abstract

Variation of streamflow and sediment load in the Yellow River basin has received considerable attention due to its drastic reduction during the past several decades. This paper presents a detailed investigation on the changes of streamflow and sediment load from 1952 to 2011 using monthly observations at four gauging stations along the Yellow River. The results show significant decreasing trends for both streamflow and sediment load at all four gauging stations over the past 60 years. The wavelet transform demonstrated discontinuous periodicities from 1969 to 1973 and after 1986 due to the construction of large reservoirs and implementation of numerous soil and water conservations practices. The sediment rating curves with the power-law function was applied to investigate the relationship between discharge and sediment load. The results indicate distinct variations of the relationship between streamflow and sediment and implied significant hydro-morphological changes within different periods. The reducing sediment supply from the source region and the increased erosive power of the river are detected at Lanzhou station, while the decrease of the transport capacity at Toudaoguai is caused by severe siltation. Significant changes in the relationship between streamflow and sediment load are found at Huayuankou and Gaocun stations, which are largely induced by evident sediment income and trapping effects of large reservoirs. It is estimated that numerous reservoirs have strongly altered the regime and magnitude of streamflow and trapped large amount of sediment, leading to severe siltation and evident reduction of their total volumes. A decrease in precipitation, incoming water from the upper reaches, soil and water conservation measures as well as water consumption contribute most to the significant reduction of streamflow. The decrease of sediment load mainly resulted from various soil and water conservation measures and trapping in reservoirs from 1986 to 2011.

Suggested Citation

  • Guangju Zhao & Xingmin Mu & Alex Strehmel & Peng Tian, 2014. "Temporal Variation of Streamflow, Sediment Load and Their Relationship in the Yellow River Basin, China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(3), pages 1-13, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0091048
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0091048
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091048
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091048&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0091048?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giordano, Mark & Zhu, Zhongping & Cai, Ximing & Hong, Shangchi & Xue, Yunpeng & Zhang, Xuecheng, 2004. "Water management in the Yellow River Basin: Background, current critical issues and future research needs," IWMI Research Reports 92826, International Water Management Institute.
    2. Giordano, Mark & Zhu, Zhongping & Cai, X. & Hong, S. & Zhang, X. & Xue, Y., 2004. "Water management in the Yellow River Basin: background, current critical issues and future research needs," IWMI Research Reports H035287, International Water Management Institute.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shi, Yongbin & Li, Le & Wang, Yougui & Chen, Jiawei & Stanley, H. Eugene, 2019. "A study of Chinese regional hierarchical structure based on surnames," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 518(C), pages 169-176.
    2. Huanyang Zhou & Zhaoli Wang & Xushu Wu & Yuhong Chen & Yixuan Zhong & Zejun Li & Jiachao Chen & Jun Li & Shenglian Guo & Xiaohong Chen, 2019. "Spatiotemporal Variation of Annual Runoff and Sediment Load in the Pearl River during 1953–2017," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-20, September.
    3. Li-Chi Chiang & Yung-Chieh Wang & Ci-Jyun Liao, 2019. "Spatiotemporal Variation of Sediment Export from Multiple Taiwan Watersheds," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-24, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gichuki, Francis & Molden, David, 2008. "Bright basins: do many bright spots make a basin shine?," IWMI Books, Reports H041599, International Water Management Institute.
    2. Qiang Zhang & Chong-Yu Xu & Tao Yang, 2009. "Variability of Water Resource in the Yellow River Basin of Past 50 Years, China," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 23(6), pages 1157-1170, April.
    3. Xiao-jun Wang & Jian-yun Zhang & Shahid Shamsuddin & Ru-lin Oyang & Tie-sheng Guan & Jian-guo Xue & Xu Zhang, 2017. "Impacts of climate variability and changes on domestic water use in the Yellow River Basin of China," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 595-608, April.
    4. Xiao-Jun Wang & Jian-Yun Zhang & Shamsuddin Shahid & Wei Xie & Chao-Yang Du & Xiao-Chuan Shang & Xu Zhang, 2018. "Modeling domestic water demand in Huaihe River Basin of China under climate change and population dynamics," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 911-924, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0091048. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.