Flow regime changes under future climate and land cover scenarios in the Upper Beas basin of Himalaya using SWAT model

ABSTRACT

The present study aims to analyse the effect of climate and land cover changes on the discharge of the Upper Beas River basin. The study used climate, soil, land use/land cover, and elevation data in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to estimate the discharge that is calibrated and validated using the observed discharge data of the Thalout gauge site. The findings suggest that basin hydrology is more sensitive to climate change than land cover changes. Mean annual discharge shows a rise between 0.31 and 9.65% under climate change scenarios, but it may decline by 9% under land cover change scenarios by the mid-21^st century. Under all the climate change and land cover scenarios, seasonal variations in discharge are more prominent than annual changes. Water availability would be more in pre-monsoon season because of warming in the future. These changes would be beneficial in the short run, but may adversely affect the water availability in the long run.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• land cover
• discharge
• SWAT
• water resources

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), USA for sharing MOD10A1 data in the public domain; and to the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), for providing the Landsat satellite images. The first author is obliged to the University Grant Commission (UGC), Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, for providing the fellowship to carry out the research work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.