Detection of Abrupt Changes in Runoff in the Weihe River Basin

Climate change and human activities are two major driving factors for variations in hydrological patterns globally, and it is of significant importance to distinguish their effects on the change of hydrological regime in order to formulate robust water management strategies. Hilbert-Huang transform-based time-frequency analysis is employed in this study to detect abrupt changes and periods of the runoff at five hydrological stations in the Weihe River Basin, China, from 1951 to 2010. The key part of the method is the empirical decomposition mode with which any complicated data set can be decomposed into small number of intrinsic mode functions that admit well adaptive Hilbert transforms. Moreover, an attempt has been made to find out the specific reason for the abrupt point at the five hydrological stations in the Weihe River Basin. The results are presented as follows: (1) annual runoff significantly declined in the basin in intervals of 8 similar to 15 years; (2) abrupt changes occurred in 1971, 1982, and 1994 at Huaxian, 1972 and 1982 at Xianyang, 1992 at Zhangjiashan, 1990 at Zhuangtou, and 1984 at Beidao; (3) changes were more frequent and complex in the mainstream and downstream reaches than in tributaries and upstream reaches, respectively.