Articles | Volume 21, issue 9
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4363-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4363-2017
Research article
 | 
07 Sep 2017
Research article |  | 07 Sep 2017

Spatio-temporal patterns of the effects of precipitation variability and land use/cover changes on long-term changes in sediment yield in the Loess Plateau, China

Guangyao Gao, Jianjun Zhang, Yu Liu, Zheng Ning, Bojie Fu, and Murugesu Sivapalan

Abstract. Within China's Loess Plateau there have been concerted revegetation efforts and engineering measures since the 1950s aimed at reducing soil erosion and land degradation. As a result, annual streamflow, sediment yield, and sediment concentration have all decreased considerably. Human-induced land use/cover change (LUCC) was the dominant factor, contributing over 70 % of the sediment load reduction, whereas the contribution of precipitation was less than 30 %. In this study, we use 50-year time series data (1961–2011), showing decreasing trends in the annual sediment loads of 15 catchments, to generate spatio-temporal patterns in the effects of LUCC and precipitation variability on sediment yield. The space–time variability of sediment yield was expressed notionally as a product of two factors representing (i) the effect of precipitation and (ii) the fraction of treated land surface area. Under minimal LUCC, the square root of annual sediment yield varied linearly with precipitation, with the precipitation–sediment load relationship showing coherent spatial patterns amongst the catchments. As the LUCC increased and took effect, the changes in sediment yield pattern depended more on engineering measures and vegetation restoration campaign, and the within-year rainfall patterns (especially storm events) also played an important role. The effect of LUCC is expressed in terms of a sediment coefficient, i.e., the ratio of annual sediment yield to annual precipitation. Sediment coefficients showed a steady decrease over the study period, following a linear decreasing function of the fraction of treated land surface area. In this way, the study has brought out the separate roles of precipitation variability and LUCC in controlling spatio-temporal patterns of sediment yield at catchment scale.

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Short summary
This study extracted spatio-temporal patterns in the effects of LUCC and precipitation variability on sediment yield across the Loess Plateau during 1961–2011. The impacts of precipitation on sediment yield declined with time and the precipitation-sediment relationship showed a coherent spatial pattern. The sediment coefficient, representing the effect of LUCC, decreases linearly with fraction of area treated with erosion control measures and the slopes were highly variable among the catchments.