Impact of Climate and LULC Changes on Hydrology

Abstract

The climate and land use/land cover are the two most important variables impacting the hydrology of the basin. The SWAT hydrological model was built using data from climate, land cover, soil, and elevation from 1974 to 2020. Under all climate change scenarios, changes in monsoon-predicted mean streamflow in the year 2071 would range from –0.11% to 0.45%, while changes in winter-predicted mean streamflow would range from 0.28% to 1.23%. It might be ascribed to an increase in mean air temperature, which would result in early snowmelt and a change from snowfall to precipitation in the form of rain. The mean annual streamflow would range from 0.08% to 0.66% from the baseline by 2071 under all climate change scenarios. In the land cover scenarios, the reduction in monsoon streamflow by the end of the twenty-first century would be between –13% and –2.80%. By 2071, the change in streamflow during the pre-monsoon season in the basin would range from –5.37% to –23.78% due to fluctuations in the amount of snow cover in the basin. The percentage decrease in mean annual flow would vary from –5.88% to –2.41% in the basin. It is predicted that the impacts of changing land use and climate on streamflow would be more noticeable at the seasonal scale than the annual scale. Future research should examine the effects of shifting land cover and climate on the basin’s hydrology.