Understanding land use/land cover and climate change impacts on hydrological components of Usri watershed, India

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.

Hydrological Analysis of Stream Flow Characteristics of Huluka River, Abay Basin

“…The Semampa River Basin, which was once covered in forests, today experiences climate conditions that are in between those of a forest and a savannah, making it more and more susceptible to water scarcity (Elizabeth, 2008). As more and more money is invested in water resource development to meet the growing demand for groundwater resources knowledge, groundwater resource trends, scope changes become important (Mukesh, et al, 2022) ; (Naeem, et al, 2020) and (Elizabeth, 2008). The expansion of agricultural land and urban areas into the forest has led to an increase in surface runoff due to precipitation.…”

Future prediction of water balance using SWAT and CA-Markov methods under recent climate projections: A case study of the Silwani watershed (Jharkhand), India

“…Quantifying the future impact of the climate and land use change on hydrologic variables of the watershed is a thrust area of research in the eld of hydrology to understand the availability and distribution of water for different uses in near future (Kumar et al, 2022). Further, to study the sustainability of existing structures and for the development of innovative water resource management plans for a speci c basin or watershed can also achieved through such modelling studies.…”

“…Few scholars have investigated the isolated impact of future LULC on water balance component and suggested that catchment scale modi cations in LULC affects different water balance components of a basin (Kumar et al, 2018;Sertel et al, 2019;Kumar et al, 2022). Others have explored the isolated impact of climate on hydrologic components (Gashaw et al, 2018;Gong et al, 2019;.…”

“…Kumar et al, (2018) investigated the future LULC change impact on the water resources of the Tons Basin, India and observed that there is a decrease in surface runoff and lateral ow and slight increase in water yield for the simulated LULC year 2035. Kumar et al (2022) applied SWAT and CMIP6 model to investigate the environmental ow and highlighted the extreme low ows will be dominant in the Ghaghara river basin, India. Climate change impact on runoff for Qinhuai River was assessed using SWAT model and CMIP6 scenarios and nding suggest that there will be increases in both rainfall and runoff hence there is an increased risk of ooding (Sun et al, 2022).…”

Analisis Spasial Perubahan Tutupan Lahan Di Das Wae Batugantong, Kota Ambon

“…Alih fungsi lahan yang tidak terkendali tentunya akan berdampak pada pendangkalan sungai, penurunan keanekaragaman hayati, dan penurunan kualitas lingkungan serta bencana alam yang sewaktu-waktu akan terjadi (Rakuasa et al, 2022c). Perubahan tutupan lahan perlu dikendalikan dan dipantau untuk menjamin fungsi ekosistem DAS (Kumar et al, 2022). Deteksi perubahan tutupan lahan sangat penting untuk pemahaman yang lebih baik tentang dinamika lanskap selama periode yang diketahui memiliki pengelolaan berkelanjutan (Salakory dan Rakuasa, 2022).…”