Investigation into the Impacts of Land-Use Change on Runoff Generation Characteristics in the Upper Huaihe River Basin, China

Abstract

Land-use change has significant impacts on hydrologic processes at the watershed level; thus, quantitative assessment on the impacts of land-use change is vital for basin environment protection and water resources sustainable development. Owing largely to computer and geographical information system (GIS) technology improvements, the distributed hydrological models, which allow describing the temporal variability and spatial distribution of water-balance components, offer an effective approach to quantify the land-use change effects on watershed water quantity. In this study, a soil and water assessment tool model was used to simulate land-use change effects on water quantity in the upper Huaihe River basin in China above the Xixian hydrological controlling station with a catchment area of