Objectives

The Huai River is the third largest river in China. It is also one of the most seriously polluted rivers in China. Historically, the Huai River has been suffering from frequent floods. Climate change has imposed additional uncertainties to the river basin’s water quantity and water quality conditions. This project aims to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to study the impacts on water quantity, water quality, and ecology imposed by climate change and other associated uncertainties, formulate adaptive response strategies, and facilitate decision making for sustainable water resource management in the Upper Huai River Basin.

Fit to Fudan Tyndall Centre Research Strategy 

This project fits within the “water and land” theme of Fudan Tyndall Centre’s research strategy. Using the Upper Huai River basin as a case study, this project will develop a systematic framework to study the way in which climate change affects the availability, use and governance of water resources and ecosystems in a typical river basin in China undergoing unprecedentedly rapid changes, which could provide crucial information for its sustainable water resources management in the context of climate change. 

Methods

The project consists of four research components:

1) Set up, calibrate and validate the HYPE, MIKE-SHE, and SWAT models to simulate the hydrological and non-point          pollution processes of the basin. 

2) Determine the possible climate change scenarios of the basin, and study the sensitivity of the basin’s water environment in response to climate change.

3) Downscale IPCC’s GCMs results under different emission scenarios. Estimate the magnitude of the impacts of future climate change on the basin’s water quantity and quality conditions as well as the associated uncertainties based on modeling results. 

4) Develop a spatial decision system prototype for sustainable water resource management of the basin with the developed hydrological and non-point source pollution models, GIS and an integration module.

International Collaborations

This project is built on the complementary strengths of Fudan and UEA. Researchers from Fudan University include Zheng Zheng, Xingzhang Luo, and Xiaoying Yang. Researchers from UEA include Declan Conway, Yi He, and Kevin Hiscock. Fudan University has conducted extensive research in river basin pollution control and ecological restoration, with scores of national-level projects on different lakes of national priority including Lake Tai, ErHai, and Dianchi, while UEA is a leading university in research on climate change, bio-geochemical models, and policy formation in response to climate change in the world.

Outputs

After finishing the project, we expect to:

1)Produce a policy report on water environment management in response to climate change in the study region. 

2)Develop the spatial decision system prototype for water environment management in response to climate change in the study region.

3)Publish papers in international prestigious journals.