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Evaluating Hydrological Response of Future Land Cover Change Scenarios in the San Pedro River (U.S./Mexico) with the Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment (AGWA) Tool.
Citation:
Kepner, W., D. Goodrich, I. Burns, G. Sidman, D. Guertin, L. Levick, W. Yee, M. Scianni, C. Meek, AND J. Vollmer. Evaluating Hydrological Response of Future Land Cover Change Scenarios in the San Pedro River (U.S./Mexico) with the Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment (AGWA) Tool. . To be Presented at Interagency Conference on Research in Watersheds, North Charleston, SC, March 02 - 05, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
Slide presentation at the FIFTH INTERAGENCY CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN THE WATERSHEDS Headwaters to Estuaries: Advances in Watershed Science and Management, March 2-5, 2015 at Trident Technical College, 7000 Rivers Avenue, North Charleston, SC 29406
Description:
Long-term land-use and land cover change and their associated impacts pose critical challenges to sustaining vital hydrological ecosystem services for future generations. In this study, a methodology was developed to characterize potential hydrologic impacts from future urban growth through time. Future growth is represented by housing density maps generated in decadal intervals from 2010 to 2100, produced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Integrated Climate and Land-Use Scenarios (ICLUS) database. ICLUS developed future housing density maps by adapting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) social, economic, and demographic storylines to the conterminous United States. To characterize hydrologic impacts from future growth, the housing density maps were reclassified to National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2006 land cover classes and used to parameterize the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) using the Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment (AGWA) tool. The objective of this project was to develop and describe a methodology for adapting the ICLUS data for use in AGWA as an approach to evaluate basin-wide impacts of development on streamflow runoff characteristics and water quality. The findings include 1) a presentation of qualitative results from the application of the methodology to evaluate water scenario analyses related to a baseline condition and projected changes and 2) a discussion of implications of the analysis for water resources and land management in the San Pedro River Basin, an arid international watershed on the U.S./Mexico border.