Climate and land use changes on streamflow and subsurface recharge in the Fluvià Basin, Spain

Abstract

Climate change impact on water resources (streamflow and deep natural recharge) based on the downscaled outputs from the ECHAM5 general circulation model (GCM) has been investigated in the Mediterranean basin (Fluvià, Spain) for the A2, B1 greenhouse scenarios and 2000-2024/2025-2050 time slices. The HEC-HMS 3.4 rainfall-runoff numerical model was the basic tool used to generate streamflow for the historical period, and deep natural recharge was calculated from Visual-BALAN 2.0, a water-soil-plant distributed model. The hydrologic and recharge models were employed to generate future climate change hydrographs and the deep recharge amount. Furthermore, the selected future climate scenarios, subject to possible changes in the land use/land cover forecast, were integrated into the models, and water resource impacts were assessed. The multiple combinations of climate model, time slices, greenhouse scenarios, land use/land cover scenarios and hydrological estimation methods resulted in six scenarios. The obtained results estimate an increase in temperature (1.5 °C), a decline in precipitation (17%) and a maximum decrease of 49.5% and 16.8% in runoff and groundwater recharge, respectively, for 2050 (A2) compared to the historical values. Planned land cover scenarios, implying small changes of agricultural and forested land, show no major contribution to future water resource changes. According to the results, the most sensitive parameters conditioning future water resources are changes in temperature and precipitation.