The impacts of a changing climate on catchment water balance and forest management

Abstract

AbstractClimate change has serious impacts on forest services with regard to the spatial and temporal distribution of water within catchments. Hence, combined forest and catchment management in a changing climate is a crucial concern for people and society. To assess hydrological processes and water resources in two forested headwater catchments in south‐west Germany the physical based hydrological model ArcAPEX was calibrated to investigate climate change scenarios for the near (2021–2050) and far (2071–2100) future. Even though the trend in temperature is positive in most regional climate change scenarios for south‐west Germany, the precipitation trend is quite ambiguous. Different precipitation scenarios give access to the possible bandwidth between water stress and flood generation. Our results can be used to describe water resources and discharge characteristics under conditions of different land use change scenarios.Management option for a sustainable forestry and flood mitigation will be to “spread the risk” by creating forests with a high biodiversity and a prioritization of forest services and functions. The principle is to find “no‐regret” decisions. In this sense, final decisions should not be taken too early, and several options should be kept open, such as dealing with increasingly frequent droughts on one hand and increased runoff generation on the other hand. Thus, it should remain possible for forest and catchment management authorities to react to possible developments in an uncertain future.