Yang Qinye

Climatic trends over the Tibetan Plateau during 1971-2000

Trends of annual and monthly temperature, precipitation, potential evapotranspiration and aridity index were analyzed to understand climate change during the period 1971–2000 over the Tibetan Plateau which is one of the most special regions sensitive to global climate change. FAO56-Penmen-Monteith model was modified to calculate potential evapotranspiration which integrated many climatic elements including maximum and minimum temperatures, solar radiation, relative humidity and wind speed. Results indicate generally warming trends of the annual averaged and monthly temperatures, increasing trends of precipitation except in April and September, decreasing trends of annual and monthly potential evapotranspiration, and increasing aridity index except in September. It is not the isolated climatic elements that are important to moisture conditions, but their integrated and simultaneous effect. Moreover, potential evapotranspiration often changes the effect of precipitation on moisture conditions. The climate trends suggest an important warm and humid tendency averaged over the southern plateau in annual period and in August. Moisture conditions would probably get drier at large area in the headwater region of the three rivers in annual average and months from April to November, and the northeast of the plateau from July to September. Complicated climatic trends over the Tibetan Plateau reveal that climatic factors have nonlinear relationships, and resulte in much uncertainty together with the scarcity of observation data. The results would enhance our understanding of the potential impact of climate change on environment in the Tibetan Plateau. Further research of the sensitivity and attribution of climate change to moisture conditions on the plateau is necessary.

Delineation of eco-geographic regional system of China

Eco-geographic regionalization has been one of the most important topics in China’s regionalization researches since the end of the 20th century. It is a major ecosystem in geographic zonality. A hierarchical system, which is formed by division or combination of natural features based on geographic relativity and comparison of major ecosystem factors (including biological and non-biological) and geographic zonality, is called eco-geographic regional system. This paper introduces process of China’s regionalization development. The first level unit, temperature zone, is delineated with main criteria of temperature. The second level unit, humidity region, is based on criteria of water/moisture states. The third level unit, natural region, is divided according to medium geomorphologic units. Vegetation types and soils are applied as supplementary criteria to indicate temperature and water/moisture states. Mapping process from qualitative to quantitative and China’s eco-geographic regional system are also explained in this paper.

Land-Use and Agricultural Development

Due to the unique environment and social-economic development situation, the Tibetan Plateau has its characteristics in land-use. In Tibetan Plateau, agricultural land occupies about 138,285 thousand hectares, of which farmland is 1,562 thousand hectares, orchard is 21 thousand hectares, forestry land is 26,067 thousand hectares, and grazing land is 110,636 thousand hectares. Non-agricultural land occupies 419 thousand hectares, of which residential and industrial land takes 292 thousand hectares, and communication land 127 thousand hectares. Water surface occupies 8,422 thousand hectares and undeveloped land occupies 75,881 thousand hectares. Agricultural land is 62% of the total and undeveloped land is 34%. On the other hand, output value of agriculture is not as much as the secondary and the tertiary industries but proportion of agricultural output value is higher than the national average. Taking 1993 for example, output value of agriculture is 30.21% of the total output value of the plateau, while the national average is 21.2%. The proportion of agricultural output value is 9% higher than that of national average. Therefore agricultural land plays a very important role and activities of agricultural production are the principal part of land-use in the plateau.

The characteristics of dike-break flood in different scenarios of the lower Yellow River based on numerical simulations

The lower Yellow River still faces the threat of flood due to the unusual precipitation caused by global environmental change, river channel sedimentation, hidden danger in the dike and unfavorable river regime of “hanging river”. According to the characteristics of the dike-break flood of the Yellow River, this paper has simulated, in six different scenarios, the dike-break flood routing by inputting the terrain data, typical historical flood data and land use data of study area to two-dimensional unsteady flow model. The results show that: firstly, the routing process of flood will occupy other rivers on the way and return to the rivers after reaching the lower reaches; secondly, in the same river reach, flood inundating area of north band is bigger than that at corresponding location of south bank under the same historical flood; thirdly, it is different in the degree of flood inundation in different regions due to different geographical locations in flood plain; fourthly, the area of mainstream where flood is deep and flow velocity is quick is relatively smaller, but the area of non-mainstream, where flood is shallow and flow velocity is slow, is relatively big; and finally, the possible influenced area of the dike-break flood is 141,948 km2.

Advances in terrestrial system research in China

Land surface is of spatial-temporal heterogeneity. Terrestrial system (TS) comprehensively studies on land surface and physical regionalization objectively describes geographical zonation of the system. China has a vast area with apparent spatial variations in resources and environmental conditions, which highly influence on socio-economic development. In this paper, progress of the TS studies in China is overviewed and research priorities in the near future are prospected. Since the 1950s, China has paid great attention to the TS study as its socio-economic development, and conducted research on physical geographical regionalization, eco-geographical regionalization and comprehensive regionalization. Along with the deepening of global change research, dynamics of TS have been highly concerned. During the studies, methodology has been developed from qualitative research of integration of experts’ brainpower gradually to quantitative research based on field observation and experiments of the natural processes, including physical, chemical and biological processes, as well as application of information technology and mathematical simulation. In the near future, TS would combine with the ideology, objectives and key researches of Future Earth program, to focus on the mechanism and regional effects of interaction among land surface elements, the response of TS to global change, the quantitative recognition on regional unit boundary, and the application to TS in sustainable socio-economic development.

Dike Breach Risks of Different Flood Conditions in the Lower Yellow River

Abstract Based on the analysis of hanging rivers’ actuality in the lower Yellow River and researches related to the evaluation of dike breach risks, it is put forward that the influencing factors of dike beach risks in the lower Yellow River should involve four aspects, the flow and sediment movement, the regional crustal stability, the variation of river regime and the stability of river dikes. With this, the evaluation indexes system of dike breach risks is established, and with the support of geographic information systems technology, the model of multi-hierarchical fuzzy comprehensive judgment is applied to estimate the dike beach risks of the hanging rivers in the lower Yellow River under different flood conditions. The evaluation results of dike breach risks show the following distributing regularities of dike breach risks in the lower Yellow River: (1) Dike breach risks increase with the increase of the flood. (2) Dike breach risks decrease with the changes of river patterns along the channel. (3) There are great risks of dike breach in the wandering reaches, and it is relatively higher in the south bank than in the north in wandering reaches. (4) There is a higher dike breach risk in the north bank than in the south in winding reaches. Simultaneously, the evaluation results manifest that the evaluation indexes system established from the flow and sediment movement, the regional crustal stability, the variation of river regime and the stability of river dikes can represent the actual situation of the lower Yellow River more comprehensively. The application of multihierarchical fuzzy comprehensive judgment can preferably resolve the problem of hanging river dike breach, which has numerous influencing factors and complicated functionary mechanisms. The applications of geographic information systems technology with powerful spatial analysis functions make dike beach risks quantificationally displayed in different spatial positions, and reflect the differences of dike beach risks in different spatial positions of the channel in the lower Yellow River.