Identifying climate change impacts on water resources in Xinjiang, China

Min Luo; Tie Liu; Fanhao Meng; Yongchao Duan; Anming Bao; Wei Xing; Xianwei Feng; Philippe De Maeyer; Amaury Frankl

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.04.297

Identifying climate change impacts on water resources in Xinjiang, China

Sci Total Environ. 2019 Aug 1:676:613-626. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.04.297. Epub 2019 Apr 24.

Authors

Min Luo¹, Tie Liu², Fanhao Meng³, Yongchao Duan⁴, Anming Bao⁵, Wei Xing⁵, Xianwei Feng⁶, Philippe De Maeyer⁷, Amaury Frankl⁸

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China; Department of Geography, Ghent University, Gent 9000, Belgium; University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100049, China; Sino-Belgian Joint Laboratory of Geo-information, Urumqi, China; Sino-Belgian Joint Laboratory of Geo-information, Gent, Belgium; CAS Research Center for Ecology and Environment of Central Asia, Urumqi 830011, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China; CAS Research Center for Ecology and Environment of Central Asia, Urumqi 830011, China. Electronic address: liutie@ms.xjb.ac.cn.
³ Inner Mongolia Normal University, Hohhot 010022, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China; Department of Geography, Ghent University, Gent 9000, Belgium; University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100049, China; Sino-Belgian Joint Laboratory of Geo-information, Urumqi, China; Sino-Belgian Joint Laboratory of Geo-information, Gent, Belgium.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China.
⁶ Shanghai Branch of Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai 200031, China.
⁷ Department of Geography, Ghent University, Gent 9000, Belgium; Sino-Belgian Joint Laboratory of Geo-information, Urumqi, China; Sino-Belgian Joint Laboratory of Geo-information, Gent, Belgium.
⁸ Department of Geography, Ghent University, Gent 9000, Belgium; Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), 1000 Brussels, Belgium.

PMID: 31051367
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.04.297

Abstract

Water resources have an important role in maintaining ecological fuctions and sustaining social and economic development. This is especially true in arid and semi-arid areas, where climate change has a large impact on water resources, such as in Xinjiang, China. Using a combination of precipitation and temperature bias correction methods, we analyzed projected changes in different hydrological components in nine high-alpine catchments distributed in Xinjiang using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The impacts of elevation, area and aspect of the catchments were analyzed. The results suggested an overall warming and wetting trend for all nine catchments in the near future, with the exception of summer precipitation decreasing in some catchments. The total runoff discharge, evapotranspiration and snow/ice melting will generally increase. Warming temperature plays a more important role in the changes of each hydrological component than increasing precipitation. However, northern Xinjiang was more sensitive to predicted precipitation changes than southern Xinjiang. These results also indicate that the overall increases in water resources are not sustainable, and the impacts of climate change are associated with the elevation, area and slope aspect of the catchments.

Keywords: Catchment; Climate change; RCP; SWAT; Water resources.