Spatiotemporal evolution of runoff in the mainstream of the Mekong River from 1960 to 2012

This study evaluat es the hy dr olo gical char act eristics such as annual r unoff, r uno ff in flood and dr y seaso n, monthly runo ff and ext reme r uno ff using daily measured runo ff data of Chiang Saen, Luang Pr abang, Mukdahan and Stung Treng hydro2 log ical stat ions in the mainstream of M eko ng River fr om 1960 to 2012. For this purpose, t he Mann2Kendall trend test, the Pettitt mutation test, and the coefficient o f variance ( CV ) w ere used to analyze the evo lution characteristics. . The results show ed t hat the annual runoff of Chiang Saen, Luang Pr abang , and Stung Tr eng statio ns ex hibited dow nw ar d tr end, w hile the annual runo ff of Mukdahan stat ions show ed upw ard tr end. Among them, the annual runo ff o f Mukdahan statio n had a sig nificant chang e in 1994. The runo ff r atio show ed a dow nw ar d trend, w hile the difference in runo ff distribut ion during the flo od season and dry sea2 son tended to decrease. Furthermor e, the CV of each station showed decreasing trend. The declining tr end o f Chiang Saen and St ung T reng stations w as signif icant, and the runoff distributio n o f each statio n w as distributed w ithin the y ear. The f low fluc2 tuatio n range of t hr ee stat ions ( Chiang Saen, Mukdahan, and Stung Tr eng ) w as g radually decr eased, w hile the flow fluctuatio n range o f Luang Prabang statio n increased gr adually. On the w ho le, the runoff change t rend show ed an incr eased and decreased patter n at differ ent riv er sect ions in the past 50 years which rev ealed that the spat ial differ ence of w ater pro ductio n capacity of the Mekong Riv er Basin is quite lar ge.

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