Effects of precipitation and landuse on runoff during the past 50 years in a typical watershed in Loess Plateau, China

In the past century, great progress has been made worldwide in our understanding of forest-water relationship. The successful forestation programs implemented in China-which have improved the ecological environmental conditions-have gained the attention of many researchers and highlighted the relationship between forestation and water yields. The arid and semi-arid Loess Plateau has received attention from water engineers and eco-hydrological researchers in China because of a shortage in water resources. We selected one of the oldest stations conducting soil and water conservation experiments, the Xifeng soil and water conservation station, and chose the Nanxiaohe catchment and its paired catchments (Yangjiagou catchment and Dongzhuanggou catchment) as our research areas. Trends in precipitation, air temperature, streamflow over the past 50 years, and the effect of changing land use on streamflow were analyzed. The Mann-Kendall test showed that precipitation had a negative trend (downward trend), whereas air temperature showed a positive trend (upward trend) from the past to present in the Nanxiaohe catchment. However, the trends seen in precipitation, air temperature did not contain any “jumping points.” The paired catchment approach is used to detect the effects of land cover change on hydrology in the Yangjiagou and the contrast catchment, i.e., Dongzhuanggou catchment in our study. The results showed a large change in land use in the Yangjiagou catchment from 1954 to 2008. An increase in forested land (from 0% to 40.08% from 1954 to 2008) and a reduction of bare land (from 51.26% to 5.50% from 1954 to 2008) accounted for a large part of the change in land use. However, the land use changed little in the contrast catchment. The comparison of streamflow in the paired catchments showed that forestation reduced streamflow by 49.63% (or 6.5 mm) each year.