Abstract
As the debates surrounding the negative influences of flood control using dams or reservoirs on the eco-environment become fierce, non-structural flood control measures like land use change gain more attention. This study researched the effect of integrated and single land use changes on three floods at small, medium and large scales, respectively, in Yongding River basin. A SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model was used to simulate the effect of integrated and single land use changes on floods of different scales. The single land uses were set as S1, S2, S3 to represent the agricultural, grass and construction land changes. The results showed that: (1) the integrated land use changes reduced the small flood, the medium flood and the large flood by 14%, 13% and 5%; (2) the land use management functioned most effectively on medium-scale floods and least effectively on large-scale floods; (3) S1 decreased the medium floods optimally by 24% with a 7-day maximum runoff volume as the indicator and by 29% with a 1-day maximum flood discharge; (4) S2 reduced the medium floods optimally by 21% with runoff depth volume as the indicator; (5) S3 increased the medium floods optimally by 15% with a 1-day maximum flood discharge as the indicator.
Highlights
The preferred flood management options are engineered structural solutions, such as dams and embankments
To during make sure that land use is the only changing factor in the model, the parameters identified during the calibration were kept the same except CN when the model was loaded with other land uses
The land use of 2005 can on average reduce floods according to the three indicators by 10.7%, 9.7%, 12.3%; the agricultural land was reduced by 20.0%, 20.3%, 14.3%; the grass land was reduced by 3.7%, 10.7%, 20% and the urban/construction land increased by 19.0%, 9.3%, 2.3%
Summary
The preferred flood management options are engineered structural solutions, such as dams and embankments. Critics of these traditional approaches argued that they might meet short-term goals, in the long term they had failed to reduce the economic losses from flooding and when flooding increases it is impractical, expensive and unsustainable to continually heighten floodwalls and strengthen structural defenses [1]. Flood risk management implies two types of measures distinguished by their aims: structural and non-structural measures. The aim of structural measures is to modify the flood pattern, while non-structural measures focus on reducing flood impacts [7]. Even though dams have a big advantage in flood control and play an irreplaceable role in safeguarding cities, they are not ideal for medium or small flood control due to management costs and the waste of water resources
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