Abstract
Both climate and land-use changes can influence drought in different ways. Thus, to predict future drought conditions, hydrological simulations, as an ideal means, can be used to account for both projected climate change and projected land-use change. In this study, projected climate and land-use changes were integrated with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to estimate the combined impact of climate and land-use projections on hydrological droughts in the Lutheran River basin. We showed that the measured runoff and the remote sensing inversion of soil water content were simultaneously used to validate the model to ensure the reliability of the model parameters. Following calibration and validation, the SWAT model was forced with downscaled precipitation and temperature outputs from a suite of nine global climate models (GCMs) based on CMIP5, corresponding to three different representative concentration pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) for three distinct time periods: 2011–2040, 2041–2070 and 2071–2100, referred to as early century, mid-century and late-century, respectively, and the land use predicted by the CA–Markov model in the same future periods. Hydrological droughts were quantified using the standardized runoff index (SRI). Compared to the baseline scenario (1961–1990), mild drought occurred more frequently during the next three periods (except for the 2080s under the RCP2.6 emissions scenario). Under the RCP8.5 emissions scenario, the probability of severe drought or above occurring in the 2080s increased, the duration was prolonged, and the severity increased. Under the RCP2.6 scenario, the upper central region of the Luanhe River in the 2020s and upper reaches of the Luanhe River in the 2080s were more likely to experience extreme drought events. Under the RCP8.5 scenario, the middle and lower Luanhe River in the 2080s was more likely to experience these conditions.Graphic abstract
Highlights
Accelerated climate change can affect the water availability globally
In this study, projected climate and land use changes were integrated with the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model to estimate the combined impact of climate and land use projections on hydrological droughts in the Luanhe River basin
Following the calibration and validation, the SWAT model was forced with downscaled precipitation and temperature outputs from a suite of nine Global Climate Models (GCMs) based on the CMIP5, corresponding to three different representative concentration pathways (RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5 and 8.5) for three distinct time periods: 2011–2040, 2041–2070 and 2071–2100, referred to as early-century, mid-century and late-century, respectively, and the land use predicted by Cellular Automata (CA)-Markov model in the same future periods
Summary
Accelerated climate change can affect the water availability globally. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), extreme meteorological and hydrological events (e.g. droughts and floods) are expected to be increasingly frequent, which could cause more uncertainties and risks in river basins worldwide in the future (IPCC 2007, 2014; Fang et al, 2018). Many studies have showed the combined impact of climate changes and human activities on the availability of water resources (Han et al, 2018; Kim et al, 2013; Ceola et al, 2014; Tong et al, 2012). Most of these studies adopted calibrated hydrological models forced with different climate and land use projections to assess hydrological responses under the changing environmental conditions. These hydrological models generally vary from relatively simple lumped models (Liu et al, 2000) to modern process-based distributed models, such as the SWAT model (Shrestha et al, 2017; Serpa, 2015)
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