1), draining an area of ∼742,400 km2 which covers semi-arid and semi-humid climatic zones. Its upper reaches (from the headwater to Toudaoguai) drain the northern Qinghai-Tibetan mountains and provide approximately 60% of the river’s water discharge. The middle reaches of the Huanghe (from Toudaoguai to Huayuankou) cross the soil-rich Loess Plateau, where the soils are highly

erodible during rain-storm events. The river gains ∼90% of its sediment load during this journey. As the Huanghe enters its flatter lower basin, however, it loses considerable energy for sediment transport and deposits large amounts of sediment (primarily coarser-grained) on the riverbed. Moreover, the lower reaches have few tributaries, further diminishing water flux and transportation capacity. The heavy sedimentation results in an elevated riverbed several meters (locally > 10 m) learn more above the surrounding floodplain. River discharge of the Huanghe is highly dependent on the monsoon flood season (July–October), which brings about 60% of the annual precipitation for the drainage basin. But water discharge is also affected by short-term climatic oscillations. The lower reaches of the Huanghe experienced

no flow PR 171 or low flow conditions during the 1970s–1990s, which was mainly due to low basin precipitation associated with drought. The sediment load is also sensitive to human-controlled very land use in its source region, the Loess plateau. Since the 1960s, more than 20 large reservoirs have been constructed in the Huanghe and its tributaries to meet demands for water. In particular, four large dams (Longyangxia, Liujiaxia, Sanmenxia, Xiaolangdi) on the Huanghe (Fig. 1) each exceeds 100 m in height (Table 1). The four reservoirs have a total impoundment capacity of 55.7 × 109 m3, roughly equaling the river’s annual water discharge. This capacity enables modulation of the river’s runoff by storing flood water within reservoirs

in wet seasons and releasing it in dry seasons (Wang et al., 2007). Given the different source regions for Huanghe’s water and sediment, the Sanmenxia and Xiaolangdi reservoirs in the lower middle reaches have major impacts on sediment entrapment. The upstream reservoirs (Longyangxia and Liujiaxia) play a more significant role in modulating runoff. The Xiaolangdi dam (location shown in Fig. 1) situates at the end of the middle reaches and thus controls the runoff entering the lower Huanghe (Table 1). Long-term (1950–2012) datasets of water and sediment recorded at gauging stations on the Huanghe (see Fig. 1) allow an assessment of how dams affect the delivery of material to the sea.