Abstract
Land use land cover (LULC) change is the crucial driving force that affects the hydrological processes of a watershed. The changes of LULC have an important influence and are the main factor for monitoring the water balances. The assessment of LULC change is indispensable for sustainable development of land and water resources. Understanding the watershed responses to environmental changes and impacts of LULC classes on hydrological components is vigorous for planning water resources, land resource utilization, and hydrological balance sustaining. In this study, LULC effects on hydrological parameters of the Nashe watershed, Blue Nile River Basin are investigated. For this, historical and future LULC change scenarios in the Nashe watershed are implemented into a calibrated Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. Five LULC scenarios have been developed that represent baseline, current, and future periods corresponding to the map of 1990, 2005, 2019, 2035, and 2050. The predicted increase of agricultural and urban land by decreasing mainly forest land will lead till 2035 to an increase of 2.33% in surface runoff and a decline in ground water flow, lateral flow, and evapotranspiration. Between 2035 and 2050, a gradual increase of grass land and range land could mitigate the undesired tendency. The applied combination of LULC prognosis with process-based hydrologic modeling provide valuable data about the current and future understanding of variation in hydrological parameters and assist concerned bodies to improve land and water management in formulating approaches to minimize the conceivable increment of surface runoff.
Highlights
Land use land cover (LULC) change influences different fundamental features and processes such as hydrological, geomorphological, land productivity, and associated water resource systems in watersheds [1]
The impact of historical and future LULC change on hydrological components based on scenario analysis was not conducted in the Nashe watershed
The outcomes found in this study offer concerned bodies a way to improve the LULC changes towards increasing forest land to modify surface runoff that contributes to wet season flow, and infiltration that supplies groundwater from which base flow contributed will be increased
Summary
Land use land cover (LULC) change influences different fundamental features and processes such as hydrological, geomorphological, land productivity, and associated water resource systems in watersheds [1]. The studies conducted on the hydrological processes of watershed based on LULC change shows marked increase in rainy season flow and surface runoff potential in a given watershed that corresponds to the expansion of agricultural land and urban area at the decline of forest cover [2,29,30]. The study aimed to explore the historical and potential future LULC change impacts on the hydrological processes in the Nashe watershed, Blue Nile River Basin, Ethiopia. Spatio-temporal scales; (ii) To develop LULC scenarios to explore the LULC change effect on hydrological parameters of the watershed To overcome this objective, LULC scenarios were developed depending on historical and potential future data to analyze the impacts of LULC change on water resources of the watershed.
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