Revegetation impacts on the flow characteristics in the Loess Plateau

IF 5 2区地球科学 Q1 WATER RESOURCES

Journal of Hydrology-Regional Studies Pub Date : 2025-08-11 DOI:10.1016/j.ejrh.2025.102654

Sheng Ye , Jingkai Wang , Jiyu Li , Yifan Chai , Shihan Dai , Feng Wang , Qihua Ran

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Study region

Loess Plateau, China.

Study focus

Revegetation has been one of the most effective nature-based solution for carbon sequestration. However, its impacts on local water resources vary across places, and is especially controversial in arid/semi-arid regions. This study analyzed spatial and temporal variability of flow characteristics, including baseflow index (BFI), flow duration curves (TFDC, FFDC, SFDC), and recession curves, from 85 catchments in the Loess Plateau (LP), an arid/semi-arid region with substantial revegetation activities for over 20 years.

New hydrological insights for the region

Our results suggested that while the baseflow index (BFI) had strong correlations with the shape parameter and scale parameter of total flow duration curves (TFDC), fast flow duration curves (FFDC), and slow flow duration curves (SFDC) before revegetation, its influence on fast flow disappeared afterwards, indicating substantial change in fast flow events. Event scale analysis of the recession curves suggested more stable recharge after revegetation, but the influences on the nonlinearity were complicated. Besides the impacts of climate, the elevated vertical heterogeneity in soil hydraulic property due to revegetation is likely to contribute to the change in nonlinearity of recessions. The contrasting profile of hydraulic property could enhance infiltration and generate shallow storage during rainfall event, resulting in a new runoff generation mechanism, the saturation excess runoff. This potential emergence of saturation excess runoff could be one of the explanations of the change in recession nonlinearity. More comprehensive field measurements are needed to evaluate the vegetation impacts to examine the hypothesis of the shift in runoff generation mechanism. Our findings could provide more comprehensive understandings for the revegetation impacts on local water cycles in arid/semi-arid regions for sustainable water resource management.

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植被恢复对黄土高原径流特征的影响

研究区域：黄土高原。植被恢复一直是最有效的基于自然的碳封存解决方案之一。然而，它对当地水资源的影响因地而异，在干旱/半干旱地区尤其存在争议。本文分析了20多年来黄土高原干旱半干旱区85个流域的基本流量指数（BFI）、流量持续时间曲线（TFDC、FFDC、SFDC）和衰退曲线的时空变化特征。结果表明，在植被恢复前，基流指数（BFI）与总流时曲线（TFDC）、快流时曲线（FFDC）和慢流时曲线（SFDC）的形状参数和尺度参数具有较强的相关性，但对快流的影响在植被恢复后消失，表明快流事件发生了实质性变化。衰退曲线的事件尺度分析表明，植被恢复后补给更加稳定，但对非线性的影响较为复杂。除了气候的影响外，植被恢复引起的土壤水力特性垂直异质性的提高也可能导致衰退非线性的变化。在降雨过程中，不同的水力特性会增强入渗，产生浅层蓄水，从而形成一种新的产流机制——饱和过剩产流。这种潜在的饱和过剩径流的出现可能是衰退非线性变化的解释之一。需要更全面的野外测量来评估植被影响，以检验产流机制转变的假设。研究结果可为干旱/半干旱区植被恢复对当地水循环的影响提供更全面的认识，为水资源可持续管理提供依据。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Hydrology-Regional Studies Earth and Planetary Sciences-Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous)

CiteScore

6.70

自引率

8.50%

发文量

284

审稿时长

60 days

期刊介绍： Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies publishes original research papers enhancing the science of hydrology and aiming at region-specific problems, past and future conditions, analysis, review and solutions. The journal particularly welcomes research papers that deliver new insights into region-specific hydrological processes and responses to changing conditions, as well as contributions that incorporate interdisciplinarity and translational science.