Climate Change, Land Use, and Vegetation Evolution in the Upper Huai River Basin

Abstract

Land-use/land-cover change and climate change have changed the spatial–temporal distribution of water resources. The Huai River Basin shows the spatial and temporal changes of climate from 1960 to 2016 and land-use/land-cover changes from 1995 to 2014. Thus, this study aims to investigate climate change, land use, and vegetation evolution in the Upper Huai River Basin. The Mann–Kendall test (MK), Innovative Trend Analysis Method (ITAM), and Sen’s slope estimator test were used to detect climate change trends. The land-use/land-cover change was also examined using a transformation matrix and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The results of this study revealed that precipitation has shown a slightly decreasing trend during the past 56 years. However, the air temperature has increased by 1.2 °C. The artificial and natural vegetation and wetland were decreased by 12,097 km2, 3207 km2, and 641 km2, respectively. On the other hand, resident construction land and artificial water bodies increased by 2277 km2 and 3691 km2, respectively. This indicates that the land cover has significantly changed during the past 30 years. The findings of this study will have implications for predicting the water resources safety and eco-environment of The Huai River Basin. The spatial distribution showed an uneven change in the Huai River Basin. Together, we suggested that the variability of water resources availability in the Huai River Basin was mainly attributed to climate variability, while land use change plays a key role in the sub-basins, which experienced dramatic changes in land use.