Abstract
Excerpt: In the past decades, synergy of human disturbances (e.g., urbanization, deforestation, and hydropower exploitation) and climate change has caused a series of impacts on many hydrological processes in multi-scale river basins, leading to many changes in the environment (DeFries and Eshleman, 2004, Mitsch, 2012). Such changing environmental conditions are resulting in: (a) the gradual shifts of many water-related processes, parameters and factors (e.g., water cycles, precipitation patterns, and runoff regimes), and (b) the increasing frequencies and intensities of extreme climatic events (e.g., floods and droughts). Either influence pathway of changing environmental conditions may have direct and/or indirect effects on human society and indigenous ecosystems, which in turn have adaptive responses at multiple spatial and temporal scales. At the same time, many water-related and ecological problems are triggered, such as water shortage, habitat fragmentation, and ecological degradation. These problems may cause great losses in lives and properties, and many unrecoverable ecological results (IPCC, 2007).