Abstract
Land use/cover (LULC) and climate are significant environmental factors that influence watershed hydrology across the globe. The present study attempts to understand the consequences of existing changing patterns of climate and LULC on the hydrology of the Usri watershed. Different water balance components were simulated using a semi-distributed Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. Sixteen scenarios were generated using combinations of four periods of climatic data (1974–84; 1985–1995; 1996–2006 and 2007–2016) and four sets of land use maps (1976; 1989; 2000 and 2014). The SWAT model performed well for monthly stream flows during calibration and validation. The study finds that the individual impact of LULC change contributes to increase in the streamflow and decrease in evapotranspiration (ET) primarily due to increase in urbanization and decrease in water bodies, forest cover and barren land of Usri watershed. The combined impact of climatic variations and land use change reveals complex interactions. The study provides insight into hydrological response to variations in climate and land use changes in Usri watershed in recent decades. The results of this study can be beneficial to the authorities, decision-makers, water resource engineers and planners for the best water resource management approaches in the perspective of climate change and LULC transformation of similar ecological regions as that of Usri.
Highlights
Land use change and climate variability are important environmental components influencing water resource management and socioeconomic activities
The aim of this work is to understand the impact of changes in land use and climate on hydrological indicators such as streamflow and evapotranspiration (ET) for a period of 43 years (1974–2016)
Usri watershed is situated between 24°35′ and 24°35′N latitudes and 86°00′ and 24°35′ E longitudes, with elevation of 210–390 m from the mean sea level (Fig. 1)
Summary
Land use change and climate variability are important environmental components influencing water resource management and socioeconomic activities. They directly influence the policy framework along with planning activities required. Quantifying the impact on the hydrologic responses of a watershed is a challenge due to its complex relationship with landscape, climate and hydrology This makes it very important for the land use planner and water resource manager to understand and quantify these impact at a watershed scale. There are few studies which understand combined impact of LULC and climate change (Mishra et al 2009; Kim et al 2013; Chawla and Mujumdar 2015; Yin et al 2017)
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