Hydrologic Response to Land Use and Land Cover Changes within the Context of Catchment-Scale Spatial Information

Abstract

AbstractThe Laohahe River basin, located in northeastern China, was selected as a case study to quantify the magnitude of changes in land use and land cover (LULC) during the period from the 1970s to the 2010s and its quantitative effects on surface hydrology, based on hydrologic modeling of a distributed Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model and catchment-scale spatial information analyses from remotely sensed data. Land cover maps with 30-m resolution from 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2007, interpreted from Landsat images, were used to analyze LULC changes during the last decades. The observed daily hydro-meteorological data from 1970 to 2006 were divided into four periods: 1970–1979, 1980–1989, 1990–1999, and 2000–2006. The SWAT model was utilized for each period with four LULC scenarios, which were developed by using the four LULC maps. Annual and monthly surface runoff and actual evapotranspiration (AET) were selected as important hydrologic elements to indicate the hydrologic response to LULC changes...