Streamflow variation due to glacier melting and climate change in upstream Heihe River Basin, Northwest China

doi:10.1016/j.pce.2014.08.002

Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C

Volumes 79–82, 2015, Pages 11-19

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pce.2014.08.002 Get rights and content

Highlights

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We take account of glacier melting algorithm in SWAT model.
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We simulate the contribution of glacier melting to streamflow.
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Glacier melting contributed about 3.25 billion m³ water to streamflow during 1960–2010.
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Watershed runoff depth increased approximate 2.3 mm during 1960–2010.
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Glacier contributed about 8.9% to streamflow in upstream HRB in 2010.

Abstract

Streamflow simulation is often challenging in mountainous watersheds because of incomplete hydrological models, irregular topography, immeasurable snowpack or glacier, and low data resolution. In this study, a semi-distributed conceptual hydrological model (SWAT-Soil Water Assessment Tool) coupled with a glacier melting algorithm was applied to investigate the sensitivity of streamflow to climatic and glacial changes in the upstream Heihe River Basin. The glacier mass balance was calculated at daily time-step using a distributed temperature-index melting and accumulation algorithm embedded in the SWAT model. Specifically, the model was calibrated and validated using daily streamflow data measured at Yingluoxia Hydrological Station and decadal ice volume changes derived from survey maps and remote sensing images between 1960 and 2010. This study highlights the effects of glacier melting on streamflow and their future changes in the mountainous watersheds. We simulate the contribution of glacier melting to streamflow change under different scenarios of climate changes in terms of temperature and precipitation dynamics. The rising temperature positively contributed to streamflow due to the increase of snowmelt and glacier melting. The rising precipitation directly contributes to streamflow and it contributed more to streamflow than the rising temperature. The results show that glacial meltwater has contributed about 3.25 billion m³ to streamflow during 1960–2010. However, the depth of runoff within the watershed increased by about 2.3 mm due to the release of water from glacial storage to supply the intensified evapotranspiration and infiltration. The simulation results indicate that the glacier made about 8.9% contribution to streamflow in 2010. The research approach used in this study is feasible to estimate the glacial contribution to streamflow in other similar mountainous watersheds elsewhere.

Introduction

The hydrological processes of mountainous watersheds are altered by climate change, but the influencing extent is unclear yet (Akhtar et al., 2008, Immerzeel et al., 2014). Runoff from snow and glacier melting is the main water resource in the mountainous watersheds, contributing to about 30–50% of the total water discharge in some arid regions (Viviroli and Weingartner, 2004, Yin et al., 2014). Monitoring of glacier variation, analyzing their response to climate change, and estimating and predicting of streamflow variation due to glacier variation are of highly scientific and practical significance. Water resources in glacier-fed watersheds will diminish due to climate change and significantly affect the social-economic development in the entire basin (Hagg et al., 2007, Luo et al., 2013). Large-scale simulation of mountainous hydrology is the most feasible of estimating the impacts of potential climate change and glacier melting on the water resource (Fontaine et al., 2002). At mountainous watersheds, melting and runoff generation process, water yield and its spatiotemporal distribution, and contribution of glacier to streamflow are the key issues to be addressed (Luo et al., 2013), and simulation of the long-term effects of the glacier melting is crucially important. However, the streamflow simulation research is often challenging for the complex hydrological processes and poor climate data resolution in the mountainous watersheds (Hock, 2003, Howells et al., 2013).

Climate change will substantially alter the streamflow characteristics and lead to drastic glacier melting or complete wastage of glacier during the next decades (Huss et al., 2008b, Thorsteinsson et al., 2013). On one hand, changes in the precipitation amount will affect the runoff volume and particularly the maximum snow accumulation, which usually occurs between the late winter and the early melt season. On the other hand, the temperature changes mostly influence the timing of runoff (Barnett et al., 2005). Model simulation is an effective tool for analyzing the contributions of climate change and glacier melting to runoff variation (Luo et al., 2013). Specially, the long-term runoff was forecasted by the climate model, but the physical processes, such as snow or glacier melting, have been rarely studied (Beniston, 2012). The hydrologic component of Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been tested widely in some watersheds where streamflow is mainly generated from rainfall events (Arnold et al., 1999, Castillo et al., 2014, Nie et al., 2011, Wang and Melesse, 2005, Zang et al., 2012). Some studies were conducted to test and improve the SWAT snowmelt algorithm for streamflow simulation related to the impact of climate variations in mountainous watersheds (Debele et al., 2010, Fontaine et al., 2002, Liew and Garbrecht, 2003, Zeng et al., 2012). However, long-term effects of glacier melting and snow melting on hydrological process in mountainous watersheds is underexplored, and to date a constructive and reliable module on glacier melting in SWAT is also under development and needs further parameterization.

In this paper, we explored the glacier variation and its effects on streamflow, and investigated the change in the amount of glacial water in the context of global warming given its crucial role as the main water resource in Northwest China (Liu et al., 1999). Previous studies concluded that the total glacier melting area is up to 138.9 km² in the upstream Heihe River Basin in Northwest China during the summer time from 1960 to 2010 (Wang et al., 2009), and recent warming trends in the Heihe River Basin are accompanied by increasing trends of streamflow (Akiyama et al., 2007, Li et al., 2009). After the initial shift from a positive or neutral mass balance to a negative one, the amount of melt water will increase due to the earlier disappearance of high-albedo snow, the exposure of lower-albedo snowpack and/or ice and the increased energy inputs (Singh and Kumar, 1997). In some sense, it is not only a challenge but also a chance to build a model based on climate change and the dynamics of glacier melting to investigate the sensitivity of streamflow to climatic and glacial changes in the upstream Heihe River Basin.

Section snippets

Study area

The Heihe River Basin is located in a typical arid region of Northwest China that suffers from serious water scarcity. The Heihe River Basin is divided into the upper, middle and lower reaches, which differ significantly in natural and socioeconomic characteristics. For example, the average annual precipitation is 200–500 mm, less than 200 mm, and less than 50 mm in the three reaches respectively, while the annual evaporation ranges from 700 mm in the upper reach to more than 3000 mm in the lower

Methods

SWAT is a semi-distributed hydrological model based on geography and natural hydrologic processes at watershed scale. SWAT subdivides an entire watershed into sub-watersheds connected with a river network and into smaller units called Hydrological Response Units (HRUs). Each HRU represents a combination of land use, soil and slope, and all HRUs are assumed to be non-spatially distributed with no interaction or dependency (Neitsch et al., 2005). SWAT has been successfully applied worldwide to

Calibration and validation

We calibrated and validated the SWAT model with the daily observed data in 2009 and 2010 correspondingly from Yingluoxia Hydrological Station, which is an outlet of the upstream area. The coefficients in Eqs. (12), (13) were determined by eligible evaluation of calibration and validation. The R² of calibration and validation reached 0.87 and 0.89 respectively. Modeling performance test (E_ns values equals to 0.88 and 0.87 respectively) presents “very good” for both of the model calibration and

Conclusions

In this study, we present an approach to investigate the contribution of glacier melting and climate change to streamflow by coupling the SWAT model with a glacier melting algorithm. We examine the performance of the improved SWAT model in the upstream Heihe River Basin where topography is complex and the runoff is influenced by snowfall, glacier and climate change. This is the first attempt for predicting future streamflow in the upstream Heihe River Basin. The approach is proved to be

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the major research plan of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 91325302), the National Natural Science Funds of China for Distinguished Young Scholar (Grant No. 71225005), and National Key Programme for Developing Basic Science in China (Grant No. 2010CB950900). We would like to thank anonymous referees whose valuable suggestions led to an improved manuscript.

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Streamflow variation due to glacier melting and climate change in upstream Heihe River Basin, Northwest China

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Study area

Methods

Calibration and validation

Conclusions

Conflicts of Interest

Acknowledgments

J. Hydrol.

J. Hydrol.

Appl. Geogr.

J. Hydrol.

J. Hydrol.

J. Hydrol.

Remote Sens. Environ.

J. Hydrol.

J. Hydrol.

J. Hydrol.

Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustainability

J. Hydrol.

Continental scale simulation of the hydrologic balance1

J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc.

Potential impacts of a warming climate on water availability in snow-dominated regions

Nature

Comparison of process-based and temperature-index snowmelt modeling in SWAT

Water Resour. Manage

Towards sustainable development of the environmentally degraded River Heihe Basin, China

Hydrol. Sci. J.