Preliminary assessment of the human activity impact on Weihe River runoff using SWAT model

Aiming at the facts that water resource is insufficient and the environmental base flow is hard to guarantee in Weihe River, which is a typical river in northern China with characteristics like water scarcity, high sediment concentration and pollution, an assessment of human activity effect on Weihe River runoff was carried out by predicting the main river runoff of a typical wet year (2003) using the verified SWAT model of the basic standard period (1960~1969). The results showed that the human activity had caused significant reduction of the main river runoff in wet year. The average annual runoff at Linjiacun station decreased 1.78 billion m³, and at Huaxian station the value reached 4.96 billion m³. In the whole year, human activity had placed more reduction effect in non-flood season. The average runoff reduction, in non-flood season, caused by human being was 62.78%, while the effect in flood season was 42.47%. Therefore, making a reasonable united water resource management regulation as well as optimizing the arrangement of soil and water conservation measures would be significant for guaranteeing the environmental base flow and the sustainable development of Weihe River.