Abstract: The precipitation of Heihe River Basin was concentrated in mountains and scarce in plains. For more than 50 years, in addition to that the regions of mid-eastern upper reaches had abundant rainfall in 1970’s-1980’s, other areas had normal changes; the evaporation was gradually increasing from mountains to plains,evaporation of the middle reaches was stable, the mountain and downstream areas had decreasing trends; the runoff showed steady changes for many years, but it had been a very obvious reduction process in Zhengyi Hydrometric Station between the middle and lower reaches since middle 1980’s. This was impacted by the increasing exploitation, the decreasing supply and the falling water level of groundwater in the middle reaches. The main reason was the increase of population, expanding irrigation and hydraulic building. Human activity intensity was calculated to be 18%,28%,54% in 1950’s, 1960’s-1970’s and 1980’s-1990’s respectively, and 1%,87%,12% in the upper, middle and lower reaches, respectively, which indicated that the most human activity intensity was present in the middle reaches in 1980’s-1990’s. Therefore, the article proposed some advices about respecting evolvement laws of groundwater system, restricting the affect of human behaviors, and maintaining a balanced use of water resources.

Key words: Heihe River, water resources systems, evolution, human activities