The Potential to Reconstruct Manasi River Streamflow in the Northern Tien Shan Mountains (NW China)

Abstract

We present a tree-ring based reconstruction of water-year (October-September) streamflow for the Manasi River in the northern Tien Shan mountains in northwestern China. We developed eight Tien Shan spruce (Picea schrenkiana Fisch. et Mey.) chronologies for this purpose, which showed a common climatic signal. The hydroclimatic forcing driving tree growth variability affected streamflow with a three-to four-year lag. The model used to estimate streamflow is based on the average of three chronologies and reflects the autoregressive structure of the streamflow time series. The model explains 51% of variance in the instrumental data and allowed us to reconstruct streamflow for the period 1629-2000. This preliminary reconstruction could serve as a basis for providing a longer context for evaluating the recent (1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000) increasing trends in Manasi River streamflow and enables the detection of sustained periods of drought and flood, which are particularly challenging for managing water systems. Several of the reconstructed extended dry (wet) periods of the Manasi River correspond to reconstructed periods of drought (flood) in Central Asia in general and in other Tien Shan mountain locations in particular, suggesting that the analysis of Tien Shan spruce could contribute significantly to the development of regionally explicit streamflow reconstructions.

Climatic signal in tree-ring chronologies of Cedrus deodara from Chitral Hindukush Range of Pakistan

“…However, the response function (RF) techniques were used with the modification of Guiot et al (1982) and Cook (1985). Among the three discrete versions of chronologies standard version was preferred due to the lag year effect (White, 2007;Yuan et al, 2007). The selected chronology of each site and local climatic data (precipitation and temperature) were treated separately in the response function analysis.…”

Tree ring based streamflow reconstruction for the Upper Yellow River over the past 1234 years

“…Based on the accurately dated, continuous, high-resolution, precisely measured ringwidths, and sensitive relations to climate and hydrology, the sampling and replication of tree rings have been widely applied in reconstructing past streamflow [9,11,12]. In recent years, tree-ring based hydrometeorological reconstruction have been developed for many areas of China, such as the Heihe River [13][14][15], Tongtian River [16], Xinjiang [17][18][19], and the Yellow River Basin [10,20].…”

Streamflow reconstruction for the Guxiang River, eastern Tien Shan (China): linkages to the surrounding rivers of Central Asia

“…Some streamflow reconstructions have been developed from the neighboring regions of our research area (Davi et al 2006;Yuan et al 2007). Based on some tree-ring chronologies of Siberian larch, Davi et al (2006) developed the Selenge River streamflow reconstruction (April-October) in West Mongolia (Fig.…”

“…Based on tree rings, some detailed information about past hydrological dynamics, such as the interannual variations and cycles of streamflow in Central Asia has yielded. For example, Li et al (1994) developed the runoff field of the Yili area during the period 1818-1990 with Picea schrenkiana; Yuan et al (2007) presented the Manasi River streamflow variations from 1629 to 2000 using Picea schrenkiana; and Cook et al (2013) rebuilt Upper Indus River flow (May-September) from AD 1452 to 2008 with a multi-species tree-ring network from inside northern Pakistan. Based on tree-ring data from the source region, some streamflow reconstructions for the major rivers of Mongolia were developed (Pederson et al 2001;Bao et al 2012;Liu et al 2010;Davi et al 2013).…”