Impacts of land-use conversions on the water cycle in a typical watershed in the southern Chinese Loess Plateau

•Upstream cropland decreased significantly, and downstream urban increased a lot.•Conversion of cropland to forest/grass mainly occurred in mountain areas.•LUCC led to the decrease of water yield and the increase of soil water content. Land use change is one of the dominant driving factors of hydrological change at the watershed scale. Thus, understanding the hydrological responses to land use changes can facilitate development of sustainable water resource management. The land use of the Wei River (the largest tributary of the Yellow River) Basin (WRB) has changed greatly due to the large-scale ecological restoration program in the Chinese Loess Plateau (e.g., grain-for-green program), causing dramatic impacts on the water cycle. This study was to simulate the impacts of land use and land cover change (LUCC) on the key hydrological components, using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). We investigated the spatiotemporal changes of LUCC from 1980 to 2010 in terms of four sub-regions (i.e., three subbasins and one mid-downstream area) and three landforms (i.e., mountain, hill, and plain), respectively. Then, we quantified the spatial heterogeneity of hydrological responses to land use change scenarios. Our LUCC analysis showed that cropland declined by about 0.8%, from 58,776 km2 in 1980 to 57,519 km2 in 2010, whereas the forest and grassland areas correspondingly increased 552 km2 and 16 km2, respectively. The urban area changed more dramatically in the middle and lower reaches of the Wei River owing to the faster socioeconomic development in this region than the rest areas. In mountain area, the main types of land use were forest and grassland, and the main transformation was from cropland to forest land and grassland. The area of cropland in plain could be over 50%, and it was mainly converted to urban land. The hydrological simulation indicated that LUCC from 1980 to 2010 caused 5.3% of decrease in the water yield and 6.2% increase in soil water content, but there was nearly no change in evapotranspiration (ET). Scenarios about slopping land use conversion (SLC) program showed that the conversion of cropland to grassland or forest (i.e., grain-for-green) resulted in negative effects on soil water content and water yield, with a greater effect by the reforestation. In addition, we found that the change of ET was clear in areas where cropland with slope > 15° was converted to grassland or forest, suggesting slope is also an important factor for hydr