Sensitivity of simulated hydrological fluxes towards changes in soil properties in response to land use change

Abstract

Current model studies on the impact of land use change on water resources often simulate changes in land use without considering changes in the soil properties due to the change in land use. In this study, an artificial study catchment representing the Dill catchment (Germany) was used within the eco-hydrological model SWAT-G to study the sensitivity of SWAT-G simulations towards changes in soil properties during land use change. Since there is little information on these soil–vegetation interactions, we performed a model sensitivity study to investigate the impact of changes in the depth of the top soil layer, bulk density, saturated hydraulic conductivity and available water content on several simulated hydrological fluxes. To assess the significance of the simulated changes due to the changing soil properties, we compared the model sensitivity with the uncertainty in the hydrological fluxes due to the uncertainty in the parameterization of the plant parameters. The results showed that the changes in soil properties due to a land use transition from cropland to pasture only have a minor impact on the simulated mean annual, summer and winter runoff and actual evapotranspiration. Soil–vegetation interactions have a stronger impact on the simulated mean surface runoff, although the absolute contribution of this flux is small in our conceptualization of the Dill catchment. A comparison of the sensitivity and uncertainty of the simulated hydrological fluxes led to the conclusion that changes in soil properties due to land use change are relatively unimportant in our model of the Dill catchment in the light of the low sensitivity of the dominating hydrological fluxes and the large output uncertainty due to the plant parameter uncertainty.