Reservoir regulation affects droughts and floods at local and regional scales

Abstract

Hydrological extremes can be particularly impactful in catchments with high human presence where they are modulated by human intervention such as reservoir regulation. Still, we know little about how reservoir operation affects droughts and floods, particularly at a regional scale. Here, I present a large data set of natural and regulated catchment pairs in the United States and assess how reservoir regulation affects local and regional drought and flood characteristics. My results show that (1) reservoir regulation affects drought and flood hazard at a local scale by reducing severity (i.e. intensity/magnitude and deficit/volume) but increasing duration; (2) regulation affects regional hazard by reducing spatial flood connectedness (i.e. number of catchments a catchment co-experiences flood events with) in winter and by increasing spatial drought connectedness in summer; (3) the local alleviation effect is only weakly affected by reservoir purpose for both droughts and floods. I conclude that both local and regional flood and drought characteristics are substantially modulated by reservoir regulation, an aspect that should neither be neglected in hazard nor climate impact assessments.