Combined impacts of future climate and land use changes on discharge, nitrogen and phosphorus loads for a Canadian river basin

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.12.012

Language of the publication
English
Date
2014-12-20
Type
Article
Author(s)
  • El-Khoury, A.
  • Seidou, O.
  • Lapen, D.R.L.
  • Que, Z.
  • Mohammadian, M.
  • Sunohara, M.
  • Bahram, D.
Publisher
Elsevier

Abstract

Both climate and land use changes can influence water quality and quantity in different ways. Thus, for predicting future water quality and quantity trends, simulations should ideally account for both projected climate and land use changes. In this paper, land use projections and climate change scenarios were integrated with hydrological model to estimate the relative impact of climate and land use projections on a suite of water quality and quantity endpoints for a Canadian watershed. Climatic time series representing SRES change scenario A2 were generated by downscaling the outputs of the Canadian Regional Climate Model (version 4.1.1) using a combination of quantile-quantile transformation and nearest neighbor search. The SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model was used to simulate streamflow, nitrogen and phosphorus loading under different climate and land use scenarios. Results showed that a) climate change will drive up maximum monthly streamflow, nitrate loads, and organic phosphorus loads, while decreasing organic nitrogen and nitrite loads; and b) land use changes were found to drive the same water quality/quantity variables in the same direction as climate change, except for organic nitrogen loads, for which the effects of the two stressors had a reverse impact on loading.

Description

First available online in 2014, and then published with the journal in 2015.

Subject

  • Agriculture

Rights

Pagination

76-86

Peer review

Yes

Open access level

Gold

Article

Journal title
Journal of Environmental Management
Journal volume
151
Accepted date
2014-12-04
Submitted date
2013-09-22

Citation(s)

El-Khoury, A., Seidou, O., Lapen, D. R., Que, Z., Mohammadian, M., Sunohara, M., & Bahram, D. (2015). Combined impacts of future climate and land use changes on discharge, nitrogen and phosphorus loads for a Canadian River Basin. Journal of Environmental Management, 151, 76–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.12.012

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Collection(s)

Climate and weather

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