Hydrological Modelling to Study the Impacts of Climate and LULC Change at Basin Scale: A Review

Abstract

Two key factors which alter the hydrological system are human activity and climate change. They affect the spatial and temporal distribution of water and have unequal influence on hydrological system. Hence, the study of influence of climate change and human activity is of immense importance for planning schemes and strategies for water resources management. As a consequence of urbanization, there has been a change in Land Use and Land Cover (LULC), which resulted in an increase of surface runoff and degradation in water quality. Hydrological modelling is an important tool which is used by researchers all over the world for analyzing the influence of climate change and Land Use Land Cover Change (LULCC) on natural water sources and for predicting potential future impacts from various possible scenarios. Based on the future climate change scenarios, numerous basins may probably experience variation in the mean hydrological characteristics as well as in the magnitude and frequency of extreme events. The main goal of this paper is to give a brief review of studies done to evaluate the impacts of climate change and LULCC on hydrological regime. There is a widespread usage of Landsat series of data for hydrological modelling studies based on the period of analysis. And majority of the hydrological modelling studies used semi-distributed models like SWAT for their analysis as these aren’t much data intensive but gives reasonably accurate results. Based on the results of various modelling studies, it can be concluded that, depending on the characteristics of watershed and scenario assumptions, the combined effects of climate change and LULCC may ameliorate or deteriorate each other’s influence. These effects may vary with the season or land use classes involved in change. Hydrological modelling integrating future climate change and LULCC scenarios can be an effective tool in planning future water resource management strategies.