Assessing Climate Change Impact on Water Resources in Water Demand Scenarios Using SWAT-MODFLOW-WEAP

Abstract

In this article, we present the use of the coupled land surface model and groundwater flow model SWAT-MODFLOW with the decision support tool WEAP (Water Evaluation and Planning software) to predict future surface-water abstraction scenarios in a complex river basin under conditions of climate change. The modelling framework is applied to the Dee River catchment in Wales, United Kingdom. Regarding hydrology, the coupled model improves overall water balance and low-streamflow conditions compared with a stand-alone SWAT model. The calibrated SWAT-MODFLOW is employed with high-resolution climate model data from the UKCP18 project with the future scenario of RCP85 from 2020 to 2040. Then, water supply results from SWAT-MODFLOW are fed into WEAP as input for the river reach in the downstream region of the river basin. This system is utilized to create various future scenarios of the surface-water abstraction of public water supply in the downstream region—maximum licensed withdraw, 50% authorized abstractions, monthly time series with 1% increases in water use, and maximum water withdraw per year based on historical records repeated every year with 1% increases in water use—to estimate the unmet demands and streamflow requirement. This modelling approach can be used in other river basins to manage scenarios of supply and demand.

Assessment of Climate Change Effects of Drought Conditions Using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool

“…Values for NSE range from −∞ to 1, with values closer to 1 signifying better model performance. Typically, a model is satisfactory if its NSE value is at or above 0.50 [2,6,7,22,29,[31][32][33], with models estimating daily data having an acceptable range between 0.50 and 0.70 and monthly data between 0.60 and 0.80. PBIAS is the relative percentage difference between the averaged simulated and observed data time series over the total time steps.…”

Comparison between MODFLOW Groundwater Modeling with Traditional and Distributed Recharge

“…Traditionally, recharge is obtained as a sheet of water homogeneously distributed along the aquifer [18], which will be referred to as a traditional recharge. Recharge is influenced by the effect of climate change [19], irrigation returns [10], spatial discretization [20], surface basins [21], or even temporal variations in infiltrations patterns [3,10,22].…”