Understanding and quantifying changes in hydrological systems due to human interference are critical for the implementation of adaptive management of global water resources in the changing environment. To explore the implications of hydrological variations for water resources management, the Wuding River Basin (WRB) in the Loess Plateau, China, was selected as a case study. Based on the Budyko-type equation with a time-varying parameter n, a human-induced water–energy balance (HWEB) model was proposed to investigate the hydrological variability in the WRB. The investigation showed that runoff continuously reduced by 0.424 mm/a during 1975–2010, with weakly reducing precipitation and increasing groundwater exploitation causing a decrease in groundwater storage at a rate of 1.07 mm/a, and actual evapotranspiration accounting for more than 90% of precipitation having an insignificantly decreasing trend with a rate of 0.53 mm/a under climate change (decrease) and human impact (increase). Attribution analysis indicated that human-induced underlying surface condition change played a dominant role in runoff reduction by driving an increase in actual evapotranspiration, and that mainly impacted the overall decrease in runoff compounded by climate change during the entire period. It is suggested that reducing the watershed evapotranspiration and controlling groundwater exploitation should receive greater attention in future basin management.

中文翻译：

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无定河流域水文变异性调查：水与人耦合环境下水资源管理的意义

了解和量化由于人为干扰而引起的水文系统变化对于在变化的环境中实施全球水资源的适应性管理至关重要。为了探讨水文变化对水资源管理的影响，我们选择了黄土高原的无定河流域（WRB）作为案例研究。基于具有时变参数n的Budyko型方程，提出了人为引起的水能平衡（HWEB）模型来研究WRB中的水文变异性。调查显示，在1975-2010年期间，径流持续减少0.424 mm / a，降水量减少并增加了对地下水的开采，导致地下水存储量减少了1.07 mm / a，实际蒸散量超过了90％。在气候变化（减少）和人类影响（增加）的情况下，降水量的下降趋势没有明显的下降，速率为0.53 mm / a。归因分析表明，人为引起的潜在地表条件变化通过驱动实际蒸散量的增加，在径流减少中发挥了主导作用，并且主要影响了整个时期气候变化加重的径流的总体减少。