The run‐off volume altered by the construction of hydropower plants affects ecohydrological processes in catchments. Although the impacts of large hydropower plants have been well documented in the literature, few studies have been conducted on the impacts of small cascaded hydropower plants (SCHPs). To evaluate the impacts of SCHPs on river flow, we chose a representative basin affected by hydropower projects and, to a lesser degree, by other human activities, that is, the Qiuxiang River basin in Southern China. The observed river discharge and climate data during the period of 1958–2016 were investigated. The datasets were divided into a low‐impact period and a high‐impact period based on the number of SCHPs and the capacities of the reservoirs. The daily river discharge alteration was assessed by applying the Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration. To separate the impact of the SCHPs on the local river discharge from that of climate‐related precipitation, the back‐propagation neural network was used to simulate the monthly average river discharge process. An abnormal result was found: Unlike large reservoirs in large watersheds, the SCHPs regulated the flows during the flood season but were not able to mitigate the droughts during the dry season due to their limited storage and the commonly occurring inappropriate interregulations of the SCHPs. The SCHPs also reduced the annual average river discharge in the research basin. The contribution of the SCHPs to the river discharge changes was 85.37%, much higher than the contributions of climate change (13.43%) and other human activities (1.20%). The results demonstrated that the impacts of the SCHPs were different from those of large dams and reservoirs that regulate floods and relieve droughts. It is necessary to raise the awareness of the impacts of these river barriers. 相似文献
By characterizing the patterns of temperature extremes over nine integrated agricultural regions (IARs) in China from 1961 to 2011, this study performed trend analyses on 16 extreme temperature indices using a high-resolution (0.5° × 0.5°) daily gridded dataset and the Mann-Kendall method. The results show that annually, at both daytime and nighttime, cold extremes significantly decreased but warm extremes significantly increased across all IARs. Overall, nighttimes tended to warm faster than daytimes. Diurnal temperature ranges (DTR) diminished, apart from the mid-northern Southwest China Region and the mid-Loess Plateau Region. Seasonally, DTR widely diminished across all IARs during the four seasons except for spring. Higher minimum daily minimum temperature (TNn) and maximum daily maximum temperature (TXx), in both summer and winter, were recorded for most IARs except for the Huang-Huai-Hai Region; in autumn, all IARs generally encountered higher TNn and TXx. In all seasons, warming was observed at daytime and nighttime but, again, nighttimes warmed faster than daytimes. The results also indicate a more rapid warming trend in Northern and Western China than in Southern and Eastern China, with accelerated warming at high elevations. The increases in TNn and TXx might cause a reduction in agriculture yield in spring over Northern China, while such negative impact might occur in Southern China during summer. In autumn and winter, however, the negative impact possibly occurred in most of the IARs. Moreover, increased TXx in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta is possibly related to rapid local urbanization. Climatically, the general increase in temperature extremes across Chinese IARs may be induced by strengthened Northern Hemisphere Subtropical High or weakened Northern Hemisphere Polar Vortex.
