Quantifying Climatic and Anthropogenic Influences on Water Discharge and Sediment Load in Xiangxi River Basin of the Three Gorges Reservoir Area

Quantifying the relative contributions of climate change and human activities to water and sediment variations is of great importance for regional resources and river basin management, which has become a hot topic in hydrology research. In this study, water discharge and sediment load in Xiangxi River basin of Three Gorges Reservoir area were investigated based on hydrometeorological time series since 1960s. The non-parametric Mann-Kendall (M-K) test was used to detect both the trends and abrupt changes in the time series. Double mass curve and sediment rating curve method were used to quantify and evaluate the climatic and anthropogenic effects on water discharge and sediment load. Results indicated that both water discharge and sediment load showed significant decreasing trends with annual decrement rate of –0.08 × 10 8 and ‒1.011 × 10 4 t/yr, respectively. The abrupt change points were observed in 1991 for water discharge and 1999 for sediment load by sequential M-K test and cumulative anomaly curve analysis. This study demonstrated that water discharge was mainly influenced by precipitation in 1990s while by human activities ever since 2000, and sediment load was predominantly influenced by human activities (relative contribution 86–98%, regardless of whether the effect is negative or positive). In this study, soil and water conservation as well as land use change were primarily responsible for water and sediment variations in Xiangxi river basin especially since 2000. Further studies need to be done to quantify the importance of a specific driving factor at multi-timescales.