Characterizing drought in terms of changes in the precipitation–runoff relationship: a case study of   the Loess Plateau, China

Zhang, Yuan; Feng, Xiaoming; Wang, Xiaofeng; Fu, Bojie

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-1749-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-1749-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-1749-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 3

Research article

|

09 Mar 2018

Research article |

| 09 Mar 2018

Characterizing drought in terms of changes in the precipitation–runoff relationship: a case study of the Loess Plateau, China

Yuan Zhang, Xiaoming Feng, Xiaofeng Wang, and Bojie Fu

Data sets

The role of climatic and anthropogenic stresses on long-term runoff reduction from the Loess Plateau, China X. Feng, C. Wei, B. Fu, and Y. Lü https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.07.038

Greening of the Earth and its drivers, Nature Climate Change Z. Zhu, S. Piao, R. B. Myneni, M. Huang, Z. Zeng, J. G. Canadell, P. Ciais, S. Sitch, P. Friedlingstein, A. Arneth, C. Cao, L. Cheng, E. Kato, C. Koven, Y. Li, X. Lian, Y. Liu, R. Liu, J. Mao, Y. Pan, S. Peng, J. Peñuelas, B. Poulter, T. A. M. Pugh, B. D. Stocker, N. Viovy, X. Wang, Y. Wang, Z. Xiao, H. Yang, S. Zaehle, and N. Zeng https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3004

Short summary

We characterized drought by linking climate anomalies with the change in precipitation–runoff relationships in China's Loess Plateau, where drought is of major concern for revegetation. Multi-year drought causes a change in the precipitation–runoff relationship in this water limited area. The drought causing a decrease in runoff ratio is vital to ecosystem management. The revegetation in the Loess Plateau should live with the spatially varied drought.