Comparing Effects of Land Use Distribution Within Watershed and Climate change on Baseflow Timing, Quantity and Quality
Abstract
Baseflow is the portion of streamflow that comes to stream by deep and delayed shallow subsurface flow and tends to sustain between precipitation events. Anthropogenic impacts on landscape may affect factors like soil, vegetation, climate and geology which are influential on baseflow timing and quantity. Previous research has focused on flood response to human activities' impact on the landscape, while there wasn't much study on baseflow response to human impact. This research tried to compare effects of anthropogenic activities, specifically mining, and future climate change on baseflow. The NewRiver Basin which has seen a long history of forest harvesting and coal mining since the late 1800's was chosen and modeled by Soil and Water Assessment tool (SWAT) for different location distribution of disturbed areas. Effect of climate change also incorporated to the model by analyzing the potential change in rainfall amount and intensity under three future climate change scenarios A1F1, A1B and B1. Data from CCSM global circulation model (GCM) was used for this investigation by spatial temporal statistical downscaling techniques. Rainfall amount and intensity for future dates (2011-2099) were estimated by spatial downscaling of monthly precipitation data obtained from CCSM model and then temporally downscaled to produce daily weather series by means of a stochastic weather generator, CLIGEN. The CLIGEN was calibrated first by the rainfall data for the period 1959 to 1999 and then used to produce future rainfall amounts and patterns. Result of this study will help watershed managers and stream ecologists in the protection of adequate water supply for human needs and habitat availability for stream biota.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFM.H43B1199H
- Keywords:
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- 1847 HYDROLOGY / Modeling