Prediction of land-use conversions for use in watershed-scale hydrological modeling: A Canadian case study

Abstract

Land-use conversion models elucidate the complexities and spatial interdependencies of components of land use systems and provide insights into future land-use configurations. In this paper, the 2012-2050 future land-use patterns in the South Nation (SN) River basin, located in eastern Ontario, Canada, were generated with a modified version of the CLUE model and a 2011 reference map. The SN is an example of a basin where some water quality endpoints have dropped below acceptable limits because of a combination of intensive agriculture, urbanization, and climate change. Five historical land-use maps were used to identify the historical trends in generalized land-use classes. Seven demographic and geographic factors were used to derive the spatial distribution of land suitability to each land-use class. The methodology was first validated by simulating land-use changes from 1991 to 2011 starting from the 1991 reference map, and comparing the simulated 2011 map to the 2011 reference map. Then, the 2012-2050 land-uses were generated, assuming historical trends derived from historical reference maps will continue in the future. Environmental impacts of the projected land-use changes were discussed.