Quantifying the impacts of decadal landuse change on the water balance components using soil and water assessment tool in Ghaggar river basin

Abstract

The landuse and landcover change is considered as one of the most vital components of the global environmental change responsible for influencing the quantity, seasonal patterns and durations of the water flow within basins around the world. The aim of this study is to assess the impacts of changes in landuse landcover on the various hydrological components for Ghaggar river basin for a period of 1985–2015 using Soil and Water Assessment Tool model. The landuse landcover maps have been prepared using various Landsat satellite images for the year 1985, 1995, 2005 and 2015.The fixing changing method has been employed to quantify the impacts of landuse changes on hydrological components by changing the landuse maps of different year and keeping rest of the inputs same. The correlation and Partial Least square regression are used to examine the impacts of change in landuse on the hydrological components. The results unveiled that the increase in agriculture and built-up area and decrease in area of evergreen, deciduous and mixed forest. During the period 1985–2015 there is increase in annual stream flow (0.20%), wet season streamflow (1.55%), surface runoff (12.23%) and water yield (0.22%) on the contrary there is decrease in dry season streamflow (2.1%), Evapotranspiration (0.08%), groundwater flow (8.62%), Percolation (8.02%) and lateral flow (3.92%) owing to changes in landuse landcover. There is an urgent need to adopt soil and water conservation practices in the area to avert these deleterious effects of landuse landcover changes.