PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2005, Vol. 24 ›› Issue (3): 25-33.doi: 10.11820/dlkxjz.2005.03.004

• Original Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Discussion on Some Issues of Hydrological Effects of Watershed Land Use and Land Cover Change

WAN Rongrong1,2, YANG Guishan1   

  1. 1. Nanjing Institute of Geography &|Limnology, CAS, Nanjing 210008, China|
    2. Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China
  • Received:2005-01-01 Revised:2005-04-01 Online:2005-05-25 Published:2005-05-25

Abstract:

With the research on global change deepening, hydrological effects of Land-use and Land-cover change (LUCC) are becoming the focus of attention. Based on the progress in the study on hydrological effects of watershed land use and land cover change, some issues are summarized and discussed. Spatially distributed or semi-distributed hydrological models have important applications in the interpretation and prediction of the effects of land use change. Considering the spatial variation of precipitation and land surface characteristics, the precondition of distributed hydrological model is to partition a watershed into many non-nesting units. There are four methods to delineate watershed units: partitioning watershed by precipitation gages, partitioning watershed into rectangle grids, partitioning a watershed into ‘homogeneous’ units known as hydrologic response units, HRU, by physical characteristics, and partitioning watershed into sub-watershed by divides. Sub-watersheds and hydrological response units, HRU, are preferred units in distributed hydrological model. The land use and land cover classification system based on hydrological response is established by means of adjusting and merging existing classification. There are 9 level-Ⅰcategories and 21 level-II categories in the land use and land cover classification system. Level-Ⅰcategories include arable land, grass land, forest land, orchard, shrub, water, built-up land, barren land and wetland .The methods of setting up land use and land cover change scenarios include paired contrast, historical speculation, modeling forecast, extreme land use and land use spatial allocation, etc.

Key words: hydrological effects, hydrological response units (HRU), land use and land cover change, land use and land cover classification, scenario analysis