Analysing the effect of land use/cover changes at sub-catchment levels on downstream flood peaks: a semi-distributed modelling approach with sparse data

Sanyal, J.; Densmore, A.L.; Carbonneau, P.

doi:10.1016/j.catena.2014.01.015

Analysing the effect of land use/cover changes at sub-catchment levels on downstream flood peaks: a semi-distributed modelling approach with sparse data

Sanyal, J.; Densmore, A.L.; Carbonneau, P.

Authors

J. Sanyal

Professor Alexander Densmore a.l.densmore@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Dr Patrice Carbonneau patrice.carbonneau@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

Abstract

This paper aims to evaluate how varying degrees of land-use/cover (LULC) changes across sub-catchments affect a flood peak at the catchment outlet. The study site was the Konar catchment, a part of the upper Damodar Basin in eastern India. A HEC-HMS model was set up to simulate rainfall–runoff processes for two LULC scenarios three decades apart. Because of sparse data availability at the study site, we used the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) curve number (CN) approach to account for the effect of LULC and soil on the hydrologic response of the catchment. Although a weak (r = 0.53) but statistically significant positive linear correlation was found between sub-catchment wise LULC changes and the magnitude of the flood peak at the catchment outlet, a number of sub-catchments showed marked deviations from this relationship. The varying timing of flow convergence at different stream orders due to localised LULC changes makes it difficult to upscale the conventional land-use and runoff relationship, evident at the plot scale, to a large basin. However, a simple modelling framework is provided based on easily accessible input data and a freely available and widely used hydrological model (HEC-HMS) to check the possible effect of LULC changes at a particular sub-catchment on the hydrograph at the basin outlet.

Citation

Sanyal, J., Densmore, A., & Carbonneau, P. (2014). Analysing the effect of land use/cover changes at sub-catchment levels on downstream flood peaks: a semi-distributed modelling approach with sparse data. CATENA, 118, 28-40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2014.01.015

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Jul 1, 2014
Deposit Date	Apr 29, 2014
Publicly Available Date	Aug 26, 2014
Journal	CATENA
Print ISSN	0341-8162
Electronic ISSN	1872-6887
Publisher	Elsevier
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	118
Pages	28-40
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2014.01.015
Keywords	Land-use/cover change, Peak discharge, NRCS CN, HEC-HMS, Sub-catchment, Flow convergence timing.
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1433693

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Copyright Statement
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in CATENA. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in CATENA, 118, 2014, 10.1016/j.catena.2014.01.015.