Impacts of Climate Change on Regional Hydrological Regimes in the Spokane River Watershed
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 12, Issue 5
Abstract
This study develops and implements a methodology to estimate the impacts of global climate change on regional hydrological regimes using ArcGIS Geostatistical Analyst. The model is easily used and can be expanded to different watersheds. The ArcGIS Geostatistical Analyst interface provides a comprehensive set of tools for creating surfaces from measured sample points compared with the previous method of using adjustable tension continuous curvature surface gridding. As a result, users can rapidly compare different interpolation techniques in order to obtain the best solution. Model results can subsequently be used in GIS models for visualization and analyses. The methodology was applied to the Spokane River Watershed. Results indicate that a 30% precipitation increase causes a 50% increase of streamflow when the temperature is normal compared to only a 20–30% increase in streamflow if the average annual air temperature is higher than normal. Conversely, a 20% precipitation decrease results in approximately 25–30% less streamflow when the temperature is normal but a 45% decrease in streamflow if the temperature is higher than normal. These research results can be used as reference conditions for long-term watershed water management strategies under global warming scenarios. The precipitation elasticity of runoff is also investigated. The precipitation elasticity was found to be 1.67 although it varied with precipitation and temperature.
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Acknowledgments
The writers wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and constructive suggestions used to improve the quality of the manuscript and Dr. Stephen P. Charles for his help on the clarity of this paper.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 12 • Issue 5 • September 2007
Pages: 452 - 461
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Oct 3, 2005
Accepted: Nov 8, 2006
Published online: Sep 1, 2007
Published in print: Sep 2007
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