WANG Bingjie, LI Erhui, WANG Yanjun, ZHANG Shiyan, FU Xudong
The middle Yellow River basin is known for its extremely high rates of erosion that account for most of the sediment yield in the Yellow River. A suspended sediment rating curve (SRC) describes the relationship between the water discharge and the suspended sediment discharge in a river. Accurately modeling of the SRC at different timescales is important for improving sediment yield prediction in the middle Yellow River basin. The purpose of this study is to examine how various parameters characterizing the daily and annual SRC are related to the river basin characteristics and climate factors. The results show that daily SRC from 72 hydrologic gauging stations and annual SRC from 58 hydrologic gauging stations in the middle Yellow River basin can be fitted by a power function. The annual function coefficient is larger than the daily coefficient while the power exponent is smaller than the daily exponent with both the daily and annual coefficients and exponents in the loess regions being larger than in the rocky mountainous regions. A correlation and a stepwise multiple regression analysis show that the key factors controlling the daily and annual SRC fitting parameters differ with different landform types. In the soft sandstone and aeolian area, the annual exponent is affected by the flow duration and the temperature, and the controlling factor for the annual coefficient is the peak flow anomaly. In the loess area, the main factor controlling the coefficient is the gauging area, while the exponents for both timescales are significantly affected by the flow duration and the terrain. The daily and annual coefficients in the rocky mountainous regions are strongly affected by the vegetation coverage while the coefficients for both timescales have threshold values related to the vegetation coverage in the middle Yellow River basin.