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The research of runoff responses to climate change and human activities in the Dongting Lake catchment
Received:April 20, 2016  
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KeyWord:Dongting Lake catchment, hydrological response, climate change, human activities, contribution ratio
Author NameAffiliationE-mail
CHENG Jun-xiang Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China 
 
XU Li-gang Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China lgxu@niglas.ac.cn 
JIANG Jia-hu Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China  
TAN Zhi-qiang Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China  
YU Qi-wen Institute of Karst Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Guilin 541004, China  
FAN Hong-xiang Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China 
 
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Abstract:
      Climate change and human activities are the two main factors that affect the hydrological processes and water resources in a catchment. The objective of the study is to distinguish the contribution of climate change and human activities on the variation of runoff in the Dongting Lake catchment. The daily hydro-climatic data from 1985-2010 were analyzed with the accumulated anomaly analysis method and the non-parametric Mann-Kendall test. The contribution of climate change and human activities on the change of runoff were calculated by the quantitative method. The whole period was divided into two sub-periods according to the breakpoint(period 1:before the breakpoint; period 2:after the breakpoint). Compared to period 1, the runoff at the whole Dongting Lake catchment decreased by 28 mm with the four sub-catchments of Xiangjiang, Zishui, Yuanjiang and Lishui decreased by 15 mm, 130 mm, 112 mm and 102 mm respectively during period 2. The decrease of annual precipitation and the increase of annual potential evapotranspiration may account for the runoff change. Results showed that climate change was the main contributor for the decrease of runoff, accounting for 64% of the runoff change. The overall impacts of human activities and climate change may result in a decrease of catchment runoff despite of the potential increase of runoff caused by human activities. The study implies that the hydrological drought in the Dongting Lake catchment was mainly influenced by the natural factor such as climate change.