Regionalization of land-use impacts on streamflow using a network of paired catchments

Quantifying the impact of land use and cover change on catchment hydrological response is essential for land‐use management

Abstract

Quantifying the impact of land use and cover (LUC) change on catchment hydrological response is essential for land‐use planning and management. Yet hydrologists are often not able to present consistent and reliable evidence to support such decision‐making. The issue tends to be twofold: a scarcity of relevant observations, and the difficulty of regionalizing any existing observations. The authors test the importance of LUC variables to explain hydrological responses and to improve regionalized predictions using 24 catchments distributed along the Tropical Andes.

This study explores the potential of a paired catchment monitoring network to provide statistically robust, regionalized predictions of LUC change impact in an environment of high hydrological variability.

This research was supported by the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme

Citation

Ochoa-Tocachi, B.F., Buytaert, W., De Bièvre, B., (2016) Regionalization of land-use impacts on streamflow using a network of paired catchments, Water Resources Research, vol.52, issue9, pp.6710-6729,

Regionalization of land-use impacts on streamflow using a network of paired catchments

Updates to this page

Published 18 August 2016