Annual discharge and annual suspended sediment loads of Beipei Hydrological Station of the Jialing River catchment were analyzed to describe the trend of Jialing River over the last five decades (1956-2006). These loads were also analyzed to ascertain the influential factors associated with its variation with the help of Kendall's Tau-b correlation analysis and regression analysis. The results indicated that the Jialing River annual discharge showed no significant trend at >95% confidence level while the annual sediment load appeared to have a significant decrease trend over the last 50 years. A decrease in the annual sediment load was particularly apparent after the year 1985, at which a substantial shift in the sediment level occurred. This shift is attributed to the construction of numerous dams in 1980s. However, after the year of 1985, two periodical stages (1986-1991 and 1992-2006) with distinct sediment load and sediment-runoff ratio were identified. The period 1992-2006 is characterised by low sediment load, which is most probably due to the impact of large scale of soil and water conservation, which took place at the end of the 1980s. Last, models describing the relationship between the discharge and the sediment load, discharge and sediment-runoff ratio as well as between the sediment load and sediment-runoff ratio were constructed.
