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ASSESSMENT OF LAND USE CHANGE IMPACTS ON FLOW CHARACTERISTICS IN AN EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA WATERSHED
Citation:
KALIN, L. AND M. M. HANTUSH. ASSESSMENT OF LAND USE CHANGE IMPACTS ON FLOW CHARACTERISTICS IN AN EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA WATERSHED. Presented at AWRA 2006 Annual Water Resources Conference, Baltimore, MD, November 06 - 09, 2006.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
The impacts of changes in land use/cover due to urbanization on the hydrologic regime of the watershed have long been recognized and have been the subject of many studies. Distributed hydrologic models are one means of assessing such impacts. In this study we evaluated the potential impacts of the projected changes in the land use/cover due to urbanization in the Pocono Creek watershed, Eastern Pennsylvania under a probabilistic framework by employing the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The SWAT model was previously calibrated and verified for the study watershed based on the current land use/cover and available climate data and flow measurements. Model simulations are performed with 20 years of generated climate data for the current and projected land use/cover scenarios to appraise the alterations in the hydrologic regime. Simulated flows are perturbed for error, based on computed uncertainty bands of flow time series. A probabilistic assessment of changes in flow characteristics due to projected land use/cover is presented. Results show that the frequencies of observing lower and higher flows are both expected to increase, a natural result of increased urbanization and imperviousnes. The Pocono Creek watershed is divided into 7 individual sub areas to identify parts of the watershed contributing more to the expected reductions/increase in low/high flows. An index based method associated with statistical hypothesis testing is utilized for this purpose. Results not only indicate that there are clear distinctions between the impacts of each sub area to the expected changes in flow characteristics, but also reveals that the level of impacts of the sub areas are dependent on the flow characteristics of interest.