Effects of changes in land use and land cover on sediment discharge of runoff in a typical watershed in the hill and gully loess region of northwest China

Abstract

Land use plays a much more important role than other factors, such as climate, soil properties, topographic features, vegetation coverage, human activities and others, in affecting soil erosion and sediment discharge. In order to understand the effects of changes in land use on sediment discharge and to provide a theoretical basis for land use planning, management and ecological restoration, we used the controlled Qiaozidong watershed and the uncontrolled Qiaozixi watershed in the third sub-region of the Loess Plateau as examples and analyzed the effects of land use and land cover on the discharge of sediments. The results show that the impact of land use and land cover on the annual amount of sediment discharge is significant. Compared with the uncontrolled watershed during similar periods, the amount of sediment discharged from the controlled watershed was reduced by 44%, 75% and 86%, respectively, in wet, normal and dry years. In the controlled watershed, compared with the period from 1986 to 1994, the amount of sediments discharged was less during the period from 1995 to 2004. The impact of land use and land cover on sediment discharge demonstrated characteristics of seasonal fluctuation. The effects of sediment reduction in the controlled watershed were greater than those in the uncontrolled watershed in May and September. In the controlled watershed, the reduction effect coincided with the distribution of rainfall. The amount of discharged flood sediments is closely correlated with rainfall, rainfall intensity in a 60 min period and the volume of flood. The rainstorm-runoff process and the rainstorm-sediment discharge process demonstrate that land cover has a strong regulatory and control function in the flood process and sediment discharge in rainstorms. For the controlled watershed, given the same precipitation frequency distribution, the average amount of sediment discharged during the land use period from 1995 to 2004 was less than that during the earlier land use period from 1986 to 1994 under every recurrent period.

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