Disproportionate contributions and spatiotemporal patterns of extreme rainfall and erosivity events across mainland China

作者：Liutong Chen, Yuanyuan Xiao, Shuiqing Yin, Wenting Wang, Stefan Strohmeier, Cristina Vásquez, Andreas Klik, Peter Strauß · 发表于：International Soil and Water Conservation Research · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.iswcr.2025.11.004 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Soil erosion and sediment transport、Biocrusts and Microbial Ecology、Land Use and Ecosystem Services

Extreme rainfall events are increasingly influencing soil erosion across mainland China, yet their contribution to total rainfall erosivity and spatiotemporal patterns remains insufficiently quantified. Using hourly data from 2,200 meteorological stations with at least 15 years of records, we analyzed over nine million rainfall events to assess the disproportionate role of extremes nationwide and within six major soil and water conservation regions. On average, only 9% of erosivity events accounted for 80% of total rainfall erosivity, whereas 25% of rainfall events were needed to reach the same proportion of total precipitation. Hotspots of extreme erosivity were identified in the Sichuan Basin, the western part of the Northern Rock Soil region, the southeastern Northwestern Loess Plateau, and the northwestern Southern Red Soil regions, where abundant moisture and regional terrain facilitate short-duration, high-intensity convective storms. Analysis of the 20 largest erosivity events showed slightly lower total rainfall but much higher peak intensities and shorter durations than the largest rainfall events. About 20–30% of stations exhibited temporal mismatches between the peak months of precipitation (MAX_P) and rainfall erosivity (MAX_E), mainly because erosivity is strongly governed by peak intensity, which is inversely related to rainfall duration. Short-lived convective storms, more frequent in summer (June–August) under enhanced thermal convection, generate much stronge...