Analysis of the Flooding Effects of Potential Land Use Scenarios on an Undeveloped Watershed in Houston, Texas
Abstract
Urban development is one of the primary drivers of Greater Houston's chronic flooding problem, decreasing infiltration and increasing peak runoff flows. Predicted changes in future flooding are often modeled by projecting historical development patterns into the future. However, this approach usually only looks at the most likely pattern of development, without considering alternative development patterns. This study aimed to create several distinct future land use scenarios for a currently undeveloped watershed and to analyze the effect of each scenario on the watershed's hydrologic response. This study used the West Fork San Jacinto River watershed, a uniquely forested watershed located just north of the City of Houston that experienced extensive flooding during Hurricane Harvey. The most-likely pattern of development of the watershed was first projected from past development trends by using a neural network. Several alternative land use scenarios were then created for the watershed by applying different development types at the predicted future developments. These development types ranged from highly urbanized, concentrated development to low-impact, nature-based construction, each featuring different overland roughness and impervious cover values. Each scenario was analyzed with a distributed hydrologic model linked with a HEC-RAS unsteady hydraulic model to find the development's impact on the floodplain. This analysis also identified hotspots where the watershed is especially sensitive to land use change. The results of this study can inform developers and urban planners as to where and how development should occur in order to minimize negative impacts on the floodplain. Using this information, these stakeholders can take action and change development trends in order to promote this most sustainable development pattern.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.H53L1934B
- Keywords:
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- 1813 Eco-hydrology;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1820 Floodplain dynamics;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1890 Wetlands;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 4327 Resilience;
- NATURAL HAZARDS