Recent research suggests future alterations in rainfall patterns due to climate variability, affecting public safety and health in urban areas. Urban growth, one of the main drivers of change in the current century, will also affect these conditions. Traditional drainage approaches using grey infrastructure offer low adaptation to an uncertain future. New methodologies of stormwater management focus on decentralized approaches in a long-term planning framework, including the use of Green Infrastructure (GI). This work presents a novel methodology to select, evaluate, and place different green-grey practices (or measures) for retrofitting urban drainage systems. The methodology uses a hydrodynamic model and multi-objective optimization to design solutions at a watershed level. The method proposed in this study was applied in a highly urbanized watershed to evaluate the effect of these measures on Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO) quantity. This approach produced promising results and may become a useful tool for planning and decision making of drainage systems.
Assessment of climate change on reservoir inflow is important for water and power stressed countries. Projected climate is subject to uncertainties related to climate change scenarios and Global Circulation Models (GCMs). This paper discusses the consequences of climate change on discharge. Historical climatic and gauging data were collected from different stations within a watershed. Bias correction was performed on GCMs temperature and precipitation data. After successful development of the hydrological modeling system (SWAT) for the basin, streamflow was simulated for three future periods (2011–2040, 2041–2070, and 2071–2100) and compared with the baseline data (1981–2010) to explore the changes in different flow indicators such as mean flow, low flow, median flow, high flow, flow duration curves, temporal shift in peaks, and temporal shifts in center-of-volume dates. From the results obtained, an overall increase in mean annual flow was projected in the basin under both RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios. Winter and spring showed a noticeable increase in streamflow, while summer and autumn showed a decrease in streamflow. High flows were predicted to increase, but median flow was projected to decrease in the future under both scenarios. Flow duration curves showed that the probability of occurrence of high flow is likely to be more in the future. It was also noted that peaks were predicted to shift from May to July in the future, and the center-of-volume date of the annual flow may vary from −11 to 23 days in the basin, under both RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5. As a whole, the Mangla basin will face more floods and less droughts in the future due to the projected increase in high and low flows, decrease in median flows and greater temporal and magnitudinal variations in peak flows. These outcomes suggest that it is important to consider the influence of climate change on water resources to frame appropriate guidelines for planning and management.
This paper evaluates the possible impacts of climate change and land use change and its combined effects on soil loss and net soil loss (erosion and deposition) in the Mae Nam Nan sub-catchment, Thailand. Future climate from two general circulation models (GCMs) and a regional circulation model (RCM) consisting of HadCM3, NCAR CSSM3 and PRECIS RCM ware downscaled using a delta change approach. Cellular Automata/Markov (CA_Markov) model was used to characterize future land use. Soil loss modeling using Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) and sedimentation modeling in Idrisi software were employed to estimate soil loss and net soil loss under direct impact (climate change), indirect impact (land use change) and full range of impact (climate and land use change) to generate results at a 10 year interval between 2020 and 2040. Results indicate that soil erosion and deposition increase or decrease, depending on which climate and land use scenarios are considered. The potential for climate change to increase soil loss rate, soil erosion and deposition in future periods was established, whereas considerable decreases in erosion are projected when land use is increased from baseline periods. The combined climate and land use change analysis revealed that land use planning could be adopted to mitigate soil erosion and deposition in the future, in conjunction with the projected direct impact of climate change.
11 August 2013 in Theoretical and Applied Climatology