Impacts of cascading check dams on sediment yield in the Middle Yellow River Basin: insights from 50 years of grid-cell-level simulation

Huang, Yanzhang; Gao, Guangyao; Ran, Lishan; Wang, Yue; Zheng, Mingguo

doi:10.5194/hess-30-5473-2026

Articles | Volume 30, issue 17

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-5473-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-5473-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 30, issue 17

Research article

|

01 Sep 2026

Research article |

| 01 Sep 2026

Impacts of cascading check dams on sediment yield in the Middle Yellow River Basin: insights from 50 years of grid-cell-level simulation

Yanzhang Huang, Guangyao Gao, Lishan Ran, Yue Wang, and Mingguo Zheng

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-5473-2026-supplement

Data sets

Datasets and Codes for An Integrative Model Framework for Simulating Sediment Yield in Large Basins with Check Dam Networks: Application to the Middle Yellow River Basin, China Yanzhang Huang et al. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29400029.v4

A new daily gridded precipitation dataset for the Chinese mainland based on gauge observations Jingya Han and Chiyuan Miao https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21432123.v4

NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Global 1 arc second NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory https://doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/SRTM/SRTMGL1.003

MODIS/Terra Vegetation Indices 16-Day L3 Global 250m SIN Grid V061 K. Didan https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD13Q1.061

Vectorized dataset of silted land formed by check dams on the Chinese Loess Plateau Yi Zeng et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7857443

Short summary

This study developed an integrative model combining sediment trapping of check dam networks with the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation, index of connectivity, and sediment delivery ratio to reconstruct grid-scale sediment yield across the middle Yellow River Basin (1970–2020). The proposed model achieved about 20 % increase of simulation accuracy compared to ignoring check dam trapping. The sediment reduction contribution by check dams was quantified and controlling factors were detected.