Climate impact on surface-subsurface hydrology considering meteorological and land use projections.

Understanding the effects of climate change on surface-subsurface hydrology is critical for improving water resources management in a basin. In such cases, the use of hydrological models to quantify and assess water resources is a common practice. With the increasing population and human interventions, the land use changes drastically. The land cover plays a vital role in hydrology as it defines the properties of land surface in the models. So far, majority-of the studies accessing the future climate change consequences on hydrology take into account only the meteorological variables under different climatic projections, neglecting the future land use changes assuming it as static. However, that is not the case, because majority of the earth's surface has altered as a result of human activities, and these changes are represented in models via land use maps.
The study presented herein, aims to assess the surface-subsurface response of the catchment under combined effect of meteorological variables and land use future projection. The analysis is performed on the Aa of Weerijs catchment which is a meso-scale transboundary watershed between Belgium and the Netherlands. The future projections of the meteorological variable were obtained from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI-14) website for the Netherlands and the same trends were implemented for the Belgium part of the catchment. For the land use, the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Land Cover (LC) maps of the study area for the year 1992 to 2021 were downloaded and linearly projected for the year 2050. The developed projected map was also compared with projected land use map of year 2050 by LUISA (Land Use-based Integrated Sustainability Assessment) modelling platform.
To investigate the hydrological regime of the area, the fully distributed physically based hydrological model coupled with a hydrodynamic model using MIKE-SHE and MIKE-11 modeling tools was developed. The base model was set up for the year 2009 to 2016. In addition to discharge, the groundwater heads are used to evaluate the model performance.
After setting up the base model, firstly, we analyzed the surface and subsurface response of the catchment considering that the land use in the area is the same as it was in 1992. Secondly, we analyzed the catchment response for the year 2050 by considering the meteorological variables as well as land use future projection.
The study provides unique estimates of future climate change and associated hydrological implications. The findings of the study will be valuable to plan and suggest significant modifications in the current strategies for water management in the area. Moreover, it can contribute to the efficient integration of spatial planning with water management.