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Taylor and Francis Group, Hydrological Sciences Journal, p. 150527103244004

DOI: 10.1080/02626667.2015.1031757

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Isotopic time-series partitioning of streamflow components under regional climate change in the Urumqi River, northwest China

Journal article published in 2015 by Sun Congjian, Chen Yaning, Li Weihong, Li Xingong, Yang Yuhui
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

We investigated the isotopic composition of the Urumqi River and documented seasonal variability attributable to the mixing of various flow sources. Next, we applied these isotopic signals to partition the sources and studied their temporal variability in summer. The isotope hydrology separation results indicated that groundwater is the dominant streamflow source (approximately 62.7%) in the Urumqi River. Precipitation is an important source for the Urumqi River; approximately 19.1-20.7% of the runoff came from precipitation during summer and early autumn. In summer, approximately 21.1% of the runoff is derived from glacial meltwater. In summer, with the increasing distance to the glacier front, groundwater accounts for a larger and larger percentage of the river water, and the contributions of precipitation and glacial meltwater gradually diminish. Throughout 2012, the proportions of precipitation and glacial meltwater in the streamflow were 17.6% and 14.7%, respectively, and only 5% of the streamflow was derived from snowmelt.