Global trends in water and sediment fluxes of the world's large rivers

Li Li; Jinren Ni; Fang Chang; Yao Yue; Natalia Frolova; Dmitry Magritsky; Alistair G L Borthwick; Philippe Ciais; Yichu Wang; Chunmiao Zheng; Desmond E Walling

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2019.09.012

Global trends in water and sediment fluxes of the world's large rivers

Sci Bull (Beijing). 2020 Jan 15;65(1):62-69. doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2019.09.012. Epub 2019 Sep 11.

Authors

Li Li¹, Jinren Ni², Fang Chang¹, Yao Yue³, Natalia Frolova⁴, Dmitry Magritsky⁴, Alistair G L Borthwick⁵, Philippe Ciais⁶, Yichu Wang⁷, Chunmiao Zheng⁸, Desmond E Walling⁹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
² Key Laboratory of Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. Electronic address: jinrenni@pku.edu.cn.
³ State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, School of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
⁴ Department of Hydrology, Faculty of Geography, Moscow State University, Moscow 119991, Russia.
⁵ Institute of Infrastructure and Environment, School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, The King's Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JL, UK.
⁶ Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, IPSL, CEA, CNRS, UVSQ, Gif-sur-Yvette 91191, France.
⁷ Key Laboratory of Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; Beijing Innovation Center-Engineering Science & Advanced Technology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
⁸ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.
⁹ Department of Geography, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK.

PMID: 36659070
DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2019.09.012

Abstract

Water and sediment transport from rivers to oceans is of primary importance in global geochemical cycle. Against the background of global change, this study examines the changes in water and sediment fluxes and their drivers for 4307 large rivers worldwide (basin area ≥1000 km²) based on the longest available records. Here we find that 24% of the world's large rivers experienced significant changes in water flux and 40% in sediment flux, most notably declining trends in water and sediment fluxes in Asia's large rivers and an increasing trend in suspended sediment concentrations in the Amazon River. In particular, nine binary patterns of changes in water-sediment fluxes are interpreted in terms of climate change and human impacts. The change of precipitation is found significantly correlated to the change of water flux in 71% of the world's large rivers, while dam operation and irrigation rather control the change of sediment flux in intensively managed catchments. Globally, the annual water flux from rivers to sea of the recent years remained stable compared with the long-time average annual value, while the sediment flux has decreased by 20.8%.

Keywords: Cause; Co-varying pattern; Global trend; Large river; Water and sediment.