Mid-Century Daily Discharge Scenarios Based on Climate and Land Use Change in Ouémé River Basin at Bétérou Outlet

Abstract

This study evaluates the impacts of land use and climate changes on daily discharge in Ouémé river basin at Bétérou outlet. Observed rainfall and temperature over 2002–2008 and land use data of 2003 and 2007 were used. Corrected rainfall and temperature data, under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios from regional climate model REMO were considered. Two land use scenarios from RIVERTWIN project were used. The first one, Land Use A (LUA), is characterized by stronger economic development, controlled urbanization, implementation of large-scale irrigation schemes, and 3.2% population growth per year. The other one, Land Use B (LUB), is characterized by a weak national economy, uncontrolled settlement, and farmland development as well as 3.5% population growth per year. Four climate and land use combined scenarios (LUA + RCP4.5, LUA + RCP8.5; LUB + RCP4.5, and LUB + RCP8.5) were used for forcing LISFLOOD hydrological model to estimate future discharges at 2050. As a result, during calibration and validation, the LISFLOOD model showed high ability to reproduce historical flows of Ouémé River at Bétérou outlet with Nash–Sutcliffe efficiencies greater than 90%. Future discharges simulations show general increase for all land use and climate combined scenarios for all time horizons until 2050. The increase is more exacerbated under the combined scenarios using LUB than the ones using LUA. Increase of river discharge varies between 7.1% and 52% compared to the mean of the reference period 2002–2004. These findings highlight growing challenges for water resources managers and planners. Moreover, they emphasize the need to address potential climate and land use changes’ impact on water resources. Then, developing water management plans, strategies to reduce flooding risks must be considered.

A Study on the Applicability of a Swat Model in Predicting the Water Yield and Water Balance of the Upper Ouémé Catchment in the Republic of Benin

“…The fit here is not as close as that reported by Emmanuel et. al., (2018) using the LISFLOD model (NSE=0.92 for calibration Tab.…”

“…The surface runoff potential of the catchment was moderate; however, substantial sub-surface water components suggest that sub-surface water development is viable as an alternative potential water resource for the basin. Although the surface runoff is moderate, Emmanuel et at., (2018) has noted that the Oueme River at the Beterou outlet will experience increased discharges for all the time horizons until 2050 and for all the combined climate and land use change scenarios. This information on the future of water resources in the basin is an invitation to water resource managers to plan for design and mitigation strategies to cope with the negative effects of increased discharges.…”

“…Further studies based on field measurements were recommended to improve the performance of the model. A study on the application of the LISFLOOD hydrological model in estimating future discharges in the Ouémé river basin at the Bétérou outlet is reported in Emmanuel et al, (2018), while the application of a time-dependent generalized extreme value (GEV) model in estimating the annual maximum discharge at five gauging stations in the Ouémé River Basin may be found in Hounkpe et al, (2015).…”

Mid-Century Climate Change Impacts on Ouémé River Discharge at Bonou Outlet (Benin)

“…However, climate models hold some biases that need to be corrected before any impact study. Numerous bias correction methods exist and are applied around the world [16][17][18][19][20][21][22], including delta change, linear scaling, distribution mapping, empirical and adjusted quantile mapping [18,23,24]. M'Po et al [18] showed that empirical quantile mapping (EQM) was the best among other bias correction methods over Ouémé catchment.…”