Assessment of the impacts of climatic variability and anthropogenic stress on hydrologic resilience to warming shifts in Peninsular India

Abstract

Most parts of the world are witnessing climatic warming and the trend is expected to increase in the future. It is important to assess the response of watershed hydrology to this warming. Moreover, human interactions and climatic variability influence the water balance of a catchment. We perform contribution analysis along with resilience study using Budyko framework and two parameters (dynamic deviation and modified elasticity), in-order to comprehend the involvement of anthropogenic stress and climatic variance on partitioning of precipitation and their relation with hydrologic resilience to warming shifts across 55 catchments in peninsular India. Here, 23 catchments have displayed hydrologic resilience (low departure and high elasticity) to climatic warming shifts. Only 37.14% of anthropogenic dominated catchments (higher contribution from human activities in runoff changes) were found to be resilient whereas 58.82% of climate dominated catchments had resilience attributes. Most of the catchments on western and extreme southern part of India were not hydrologic resilient. Extensive human interactions tend to depart the catchment from expected hydrological functioning under critical climatic conditions (Warming in our study) that lead to declining of hydrological resilience.

Global Response of Evapotranspiration Ratio to Climate Conditions and Watershed Characteristics in a Changing Environment

“…In addition, we found a positive change in watershed characteristics and thus a decreased contribution of m to the variation in the evapotranspiration ratio for many basins. The changes in m could be related to strong anthropogenic activities such as changes in forest composition, structure, and type, other agricultural activities, foliage restoration, soil and water conservation measures, and groundwater exploitation (Sinha et al, 2018). In many developing countries, rapid economic developments have also accelerated urbanization and industrialization, resulting in tremendous changes in land use and land cover (Findell et al, 2007; Sinha et al, 2018).…”

“…The changes in m could be related to strong anthropogenic activities such as changes in forest composition, structure, and type, other agricultural activities, foliage restoration, soil and water conservation measures, and groundwater exploitation (Sinha et al, 2018). In many developing countries, rapid economic developments have also accelerated urbanization and industrialization, resulting in tremendous changes in land use and land cover (Findell et al, 2007; Sinha et al, 2018). Many croplands, forests, or grasslands were transferred to urban areas to meet the industrialization and population growth.…”

Quantifying groundwater sensitivity and resilience over peninsular India

“…Moreover, this dataset precisely captures the spatio‐temporal distribution of Indian monsoon and extreme precipitation regions (such as Western Ghats and north‐east). Because of these attributes, IMD4 dataset has been used in many recent studies (Jha, Das, Sharma, Hazra, & Goyal, 2019; Sharma & Goyal, 2020; Sinha, Sharma, Khan, & Goyal, 2018; Vezhapparambu, Madhusoodanan, Sharma, & Ramesh, 2020). Here, we use the potential evapotranspiration (PE) dataset by Climate Research Unit (CRU), that is, CRU TS v. 4.01(Harris, Jones, Osborn, & Lister, 2014).…”

“…dataset has been used in many recent studies (Jha, Das, Sharma, Hazra, & Goyal, 2019;Sharma & Goyal, 2020;Sinha, Sharma, Khan, & Goyal, 2018;Vezhapparambu, Madhusoodanan, Sharma, & Ramesh, 2020). Here, we use the potential evapotranspiration (PE) dataset by Climate Research Unit (CRU), that is, CRU TS v. 4.01 (Harris, Jones, Osborn, & Lister, 2014).…”

Modelling hydrological responses under climate change using machine learning algorithms – semi-arid river basin of peninsular India

“…A bottom-up probabilistic Budyko framework has been proposed by Singh & Kumar (2015) to estimate the vulnerability of available water of India under climate change. In another study by Sinha et al (2018), the Budyko framework was used to study the anthropogenic stress and climatic variance under warming shifts across 55 catchments in peninsular India. Such a basic parametric formulation of Budyko framework can be written as follows:…”