Co-designed Land-use Scenarios and their Implications for Storm Runoff and Streamflow in New England
- PDF / 4,045,049 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 73 Downloads / 128 Views
Co-designed Land-use Scenarios and their Implications for Storm Runoff and Streamflow in New England Andrew J. Guswa
1
●
Brian Hall2 Chingwen Cheng3 Jonathan R. Thompson2 ●
●
1234567890();,:
1234567890();,:
Received: 27 August 2019 / Accepted: 23 July 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Landscape and climate changes have the potential to create or exacerbate problems with stormwater management, high flows, and flooding. In New England, four plausible land-use scenarios were co-developed with stakeholders to give insight to the effects on ecosystem services of different trajectories of socio-economic connectedness and natural resource innovation. With respect to water, the service of greatest interest to New England stakeholders is the reduction of stormwater and flooding. To assess the effects of these land-use scenarios, we applied the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to two watersheds under two climates. Differences in land use had minimal effects on the water balance but did affect high flows and the contribution of storm runoff to streamflow. For most scenarios, the effect on high flows was small. For one scenario—envisioned to have global socio-economic connectedness and low levels of natural resource innovation—growth in impervious areas increased the annual maximum daily flow by 10%, similar to the 5–15% increase attributable to climate change. Under modest population growth, land-use decisions have little effect on storm runoff and high flows; however, for the two scenarios characterized by global socio-economic connectedness, differences in choices regarding land use and impervious area have a large impact on the potential for flooding. Results also indicate a potential interaction between climate and land use with a shift to more high flows resulting from heavy rains than from snowmelt. These results can help inform land use and development, especially when combined with assessments of effects on other ecosystem services. Keywords Land-use change Ecosystem services Storm runoff Streamflow Landscape scenarios New England ●
●
Introduction Changes to the landscape will affect water-related ecosystem services, and planning and development must be informed by the range of potential effects to ensure resilient and sustainable water resources, especially under a changing climate. While climate and precipitation are the primary drivers of the hydrologic cycle, land use and land cover modulate those signals and can exacerbate or mitigate the impacts (Brauman et al. 2007). Watersheds concentrate precipitation inputs in space (regulating service), distribute
* Andrew J. Guswa [email protected] 1
Picker Engineering Program, Smith College, 100 Green Street, Northampton, MA 01063, USA
2
Harvard Forest, Harvard University, Petersham, MA 01366, USA
3
The Design School, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA
●
●
●
them in time (regulating service), and remove water via evapotranspiration (provisioning service). Through modifications to infiltration capacity and veg
Data Loading...
