Climate change effects on hydrological system conditions influencing generation of storm runoff in small Alpine catchments

Floods and debris flows in small Alpine torrent catchments (<10 km²) arise from a combination of critical antecedent system state conditions and mostly convective precipitation events with high precipitation intensities. Thus, climate change may influence the magnitude–frequency relationship of extreme events twofold: by a modification of the occurrence probabilities of critical hydrological system conditions and by a change of event precipitation characteristics. Three small Alpine catchments in different altitudes in Western Austria (Ruggbach, Brixenbach and Längentalbach catchment) were investigated by both field experiments and process‐based simulation. Rainfall–runoff model (HQsim) runs driven by localized climate scenarios (CNRM‐RM4.5/ARPEGE, MPI‐REMO/ECHAM5 and ICTP‐RegCM3/ECHAM5) were used in order to estimate future frequencies of stormflow triggering system state conditions. According to the differing altitudes of the study catchments, two effects of climate change on the hydrological systems can be observed. On one hand, the seasonal system state conditions of medium altitude catchments are most strongly affected by air temperature‐controlled processes such as the development of the winter snow cover as well as evapotranspiration. On the other hand, the unglaciated high‐altitude catchment is less sensitive to climate change‐induced shifts regarding days with critical antecedent soil moisture and desiccated litter layer due to its elevation‐related small proportion of sensitive areas. For the period 2071–2100, the number of days with critical antecedent soil moisture content will be significantly reduced to about 60% or even less in summer in all catchments. In contrast, the number of days with dried‐out litter layers causing hydrophobic effects will increase by up to 8%–11% of the days in the two lower altitude catchments. The intensity analyses of heavy precipitation events indicate a clear increase in rain intensities of up to 10%.     

Snow and climate trends and their impact on seasonal runoff and hydrological drought types in selected mountain catchments in Central Europe

ABSTRACT

This study investigates changes in seasonal runoff and low flows related to changes in snow and climate variables in mountainous catchments in Central Europe. The period 1966–2012 was used to assess trends in climate and streamflow characteristics using a modified Mann–Kendall test. Droughts were classified into nine classes according to key snow and climate drivers. The results showed an increase in air temperature, decrease in snowfall fraction and snow depth, and changes in precipitation. This resulted in increased winter runoff and decreased late spring runoff due to earlier snowmelt, especially at elevations from 1000 to 1500 m a.s.l. Most of the hydrological droughts were connected to either low air temperatures and precipitation during winter or high winter air temperatures which caused below-average snow storages. Our findings show that, besides precipitation and air temperature, snow plays an important role in summer streamflow and drought occurrence in selected mountainous catchments.     

The role of hydrological modelling uncertainties in climate change impact assessments of Irish river catchments

This study attempts to assess the uncertainty in the hydrological impacts of climate change using a multi-model approach combining multiple emission scenarios, GCMs and conceptual rainfall-runoff models to quantify uncertainty in future impacts at the catchment scale. The uncertainties associated with hydrological models have traditionally been given less attention in impact assessments until relatively recently. In order to examine the role of hydrological model uncertainty (parameter and structural uncertainty) in climate change impact studies a multi-model approach based on the Generalised Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) and Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) methods is presented. Six sets of regionalised climate scenarios derived from three GCMs, two emission scenarios, and four conceptual hydrological models were used within the GLUE framework to define the uncertainty envelop for future estimates of stream flow, while the GLUE output is also post processed using BMA, where the probability density function from each model at any given time is modelled by a gamma distribution with heteroscedastic variance. The investigation on four Irish catchments shows that the role of hydrological model uncertainty is remarkably high and should therefore be routinely considered in impact studies. Although, the GLUE and BMA approaches used here differ fundamentally in their underlying philosophy and representation of error, both methods show comparable performance in terms of ensemble spread and predictive coverage. Moreover, the median prediction for future stream flow shows progressive increases of winter discharge and progressive decreases in summer discharge over the coming century.     

Application of hydrological models with increasing complexity to subarctic catchments

Many available complex models tend to demand far more input information than is afforded by subarctic remote regions, such as vast areas of North America and Eurasia. A suitable level of model complexity must be sought so that the model matches both the availability of data, but also the spatial and temporal scale at which the major hydrological processes occur. The present paper describes a method to seek a level of model complexity suitable for simulation of runoff for a particular environment at a particular scale, commensurate with the limited data availability in remote areas. Processes in a simple model are stepwise replaced by representations taken from a more complex model, to achieve a balance between data requirement and model complexity at different spatial and temporal scales. The results suggest that it is not always necessary to switch directly from a simple hydrological model to complex one, because at particular spatial and temporal scales, runoff may be sensitive to only a number of processes.     

The effects of hydrological factors on river suspended solids contamination from a colliery in South Wales

Suspended solids contamination caused by runoff below a working colliery in the Upper Clydach catchment in South Wales, U.K., was investigated in relation to hydrological controls. Field studies over a 16 month period found that concentrations below the colliery ranged from 4 to 8028 mg 1^?1. Simple correlation and linear regression analysis of spot and storm event samples taken below the colliery gave a correlation coefficient of 0·39 between flow and suspended solids concentration. Because of the lack of explained variance, a multiple linear regression model of within-storm concentrations was derived using four selected independent variables. X₁ the time relation of the sample to the storm peak; log X₂ the stormflow at the time of sampling; log X₃ the baseflow at the time of sampling; and log X₄ an index of the storm intensity. Analysis of the entire dataset gave an R² of 0·34. When the results from three atypical events were excluded however, the R² value improved to 0·65. Beta coefficients indicated that rising limb conditions (X₁) and intense storms (log X₄) along with dry antecedent conditions (log X₃) represent the worst combination of hydrological factors for producing suspended solids contamination.     

Modelling localized sources of sediment in mountain catchments for provenance studies

A hydrology–sediment modelling framework based on the model Topkapi-ETH combined with basin geomorphic mapping is used to investigate the role of localized sediment sources in a mountain river basin (Kleine Emme, Switzerland). The periodic sediment mobilization from incised areas and landslides by hillslope runoff and river discharge is simulated in addition to overland flow erosion to quantify their contributions to suspended sediment fluxes. The framework simulates the suspended sediment load provenance at the outlet and its temporal dynamics, by routing fine sediment along topographically driven pathways from the distinct sediment sources to the outlet. We show that accounting for localized sediment sources substantially improves the modelling of observed sediment concentrations and loads at the outlet compared to overland flow erosion alone. We demonstrate that the modelled river basin can shift between channel-process and hillslope-process dominant behaviour depending on the model parameter describing gully competence on landslide surfaces. The simulations in which channel processes dominate were found to be more consistent with observations, and with two independent validations in the Kleine Emme, by topographic analysis of surface roughness and by sediment tracing with ¹⁰ Be concentrations. This research shows that spatially explicit modelling can be used to infer the dominant sediment production process in a river basin, to inform and optimize sediment sampling strategies for denudation rate estimates, and in general to support sediment provenance studies. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

High-frequency monitoring of hydrological and biogeochemical fluxes in forested catchments of southern Chile

The variability of rainfall-dependent streamflow at catchment scale modulates many ecosystem processes in wet temperate forests. Runoff in small mountain catchments is characterized by a quick response to rainfall pulses which affects biogeochemical fluxes to all downstream systems. In wet-temperate climates, water erosion is the most important natural factor driving downstream soil and nutrient losses from upland ecosystems. Most hydrochemical studies have focused on water flux measurements at hourly scales, along with weekly or monthly samples for water chemistry. Here, we assessed how water and element flows from broad-leaved, evergreen forested catchments in southwestern South America, are influenced by different successional stages, quantifying runoff, sediment transport and nutrient fluxes during hourly rainfall events of different intensities. Hydrograph comparisons among different successional stages indicated that forested catchments differed in their responses to high intensity rainfall, with greater runoff in areas covered by secondary forests (SF), compared to old-growth forest cover (OG) and dense scrub vegetation (CH). Further, throughfall water was greatly nutrient enriched for all forest types. Suspended sediment loads varied between successional stages. SF catchments exported 455 kg of sediments per ha, followed by OG with 91 kg/ha and CH with 14 kg/ha, corresponding to 11 rainfall events measured from December 2013 to April 2014. Total nitrogen (TN) and phosphorus (TP) concentrations in stream water also varied with rainfall intensity. In seven rainfall events sampled during the study period, CH catchments exported less nutrients (46 kg/ha TN and 7 kg/ha TP) than SF catchments (718 kg/ha TN and 107 kg/ha TP), while OG catchments exported intermediate sediment loads (201 kg/ha TN and 23 kg/ha TP). Further, we found significant effects of successional stage attributes (vegetation structure and soil physical properties) and catchment morphometry on runoff and sediment concentrations, and greater nutrients retention in OG and CH catchments. We conclude that in these southern hemisphere, broad-leaved evergreen temperate forests, hydrological processes are driven by multiple interacting phenomena, including climate, vegetation, soils, topography, and disturbance history.     

Transferability of hydrological model parameter spaces in the estimation of runoff in ungauged catchments

Abstract

In this study, transferability options of the Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalansavdelning (HBV) hydrological model parameter (MP) spaces were investigated to estimate ungauged catchment runoff. Three approaches were applied in the study: MP space transfer from single, neighbouring and all potential donor catchments. The model performance was evaluated by a jackknife procedure, where one catchment at a time was treated as if ungauged, and behavioural MP sets from candidate donor catchments were used to estimate the “ungauged” runoff. The results showed that ungauged catchment runoff estimation could not be guaranteed by transferring MP sets from a single physiographically nearest donor catchment. Integrating MP sets typically from one to six donor catchments supplemented the lack of effective MP sets and improved the model performance at the ungauged catchments. In addition, the analysis results revealed that the model performance converged to an average performance when the MP sets of all potential donor catchments were integrated.     

Impacts of land use on the hydrological response of tropical Andean catchments

Changes in land use and land cover are major drivers of hydrological alteration in the tropical Andes. However, quantifying their impacts is fraught with difficulties because of the extreme diversity in meteorological boundary conditions, which contrasts strongly with the lack of knowledge about local hydrological processes. Although local studies have reduced data scarcity in certain regions, the complexity of the tropical Andes poses a big challenge to regional hydrological prediction. This study analyses data generated from a participatory monitoring network of 25 headwater catchments covering three of the major Andean biomes (páramo, jalca and puna) and links their hydrological responses to main types of human interventions (cultivation, afforestation and grazing). A paired catchment setup was implemented to evaluate the impacts of change using a ‘trading space‐for‐time’ approach. Catchments were selected based on regional representativeness and contrasting land use types. Precipitation and discharge have been monitored and analysed at high temporal resolution for a time period between 1 and 5 years. The observed catchment responses clearly reflect the extraordinarily wide spectrum of hydrological processes of the tropical Andes. They range from perennially humid páramos in Ecuador and northern Peru with extremely large specific discharge and baseflows, to highly seasonal, flashy catchments in the drier punas of southern Peru and Bolivia. The impacts of land use are similarly diverse and their magnitudes are a function of catchment properties, original and replacement vegetation and management type. Cultivation and afforestation consistently affect the entire range of discharges, particularly low flows. The impacts of grazing are more variable but have the largest effect on the catchment hydrological regulation. Overall, anthropogenic interventions result in increased streamflow variability and significant reductions in catchment regulation capacity and water yield, irrespective of the hydrological properties of the original biome. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Hydrological Processes. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Advancing isotope-enabled hydrological modelling for ungauged calibration of data-scarce humid tropical catchments

Realistic projections of the future climate and how this translates to water availability is crucial for sustainable water resource management. However, data availability constrains the capacity to simulate streamflow and corresponding hydrological processes. Developing more robust hydrological models and methods that can circumvent the need for large amounts of hydro-climatic data is crucial to support water-related decisions, particularly in developing countries. In this study, we use natural isotope tracers in addition to hydro-climate data within a newly developed version of the spatially-distributed J2000iso as an isotope-enabled rainfall-runoff model simulating both water and stable isotope (δ²H) fluxes. We pilot the model for the humid tropical San Carlos catchment (2500 km²) in northeastern Costa Rica, which has limited time series, but spatially distributed data. The added benefit of simulating stable isotopes was assessed by comparing different amounts of observation data using three model calibration strategies (i) three streamflow gauges, (ii) three gauges with stream isotopes and (iii) isotopes only. The J2000iso achieved a streamflow Kling–Gupta efficiency (KGE) of 0.55–0.70 across all the models and gauges, but differences in hydrological process simulations emerged when including stable water isotopes in the rainfall-runoff calibration. Hydrological process simulation varied between the standard J2000 rainfall-runoff model with a high simulated surface runoff proportion of 37% as opposed to the isotope version with 84%–89% simulated baseflow or interflow. The model solutions that used only isotope data for calibration exhibited differences in simulated interflow, baseflow and model performance but captured bulk water balances with a reasonable match between the simulated and observed hydrographs. We conclude that J2000iso has shown the potential to support water balance modelling for ungauged catchments using stable isotope, satellite and global reanalysis data sets.     

Understanding hydrological processes with scarce data in a mountain environment

Performance of process‐based hydrological models is usually assessed through comparison between simulated and measured streamflow. Although necessary, this analysis is not sufficient to estimate the quality and realism of the modelling since streamflow integrates all processes of the water cycle, including intermediate production or redistribution processes such as snowmelt or groundwater flow. Assessing the performance of hydrological models in simulating accurately intermediate processes is often difficult and requires heavy experimental investments. In this study, conceptual hydrological modelling (using SWAT) of a semi‐arid mountainous watershed in the High Atlas in Morocco is attempted. Our objective is to analyse whether good intermediate processes simulation is reached when global‐satisfying streamflow simulation is possible. First, parameters presenting intercorrelation issues are identified: from the soil, the groundwater and, to a lesser extent, from the snow. Second, methodologies are developed to retrieve information from accessible intermediate hydrological processes. A geochemical method is used to quantify the contribution of a superficial and a deep reservoir to streamflow. It is shown that, for this specific process, the model formalism is not adapted to our study area and thus leads to poor simulation results. A remote‐sensing methodology is proposed to retrieve the snow surfaces. Comparison with the simulation shows that this process can be satisfyingly simulated by the model. The multidisciplinary approach adopted in this study, although supported by the hydrological community, is still uncommon. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Testing the applicability of a kinematic wave-based distributed hydrological model in two climatically contrasting catchments

Abstract

Steep mountainous areas account for 70% of all river catchments in Japan. To predict river discharge for the mountainous catchments, many studies have applied distributed hydrological models based on a kinematic wave approximation with surface and subsurface flow components (DHM-KWSS). These models reproduce observed river discharge of catchments in Japan well; however, the applicability of a DHM-KWSS to catchments with different geographical and climatic conditions has not been sufficiently examined. This research applied a DHM-KWSS to two river basins that have different climatic conditions from basins in Japan to examine the transferability of the DHM-KWSS model structure. Our results show that the DHM-KWSS model structure explained flow regimes for a wet river basin as well as a large flood event in an arid basin; however, it was unable to explain long-term flow regimes for the arid basin case study.     

Use of stable water isotopes to identify hydrological processes of meteoric water in montane catchments

This study analyzes the stable isotopic compositions of hydrogen and oxygen (δ²H, δ¹⁸O) in montane meteoric waters including precipitation and stream water of central Taiwan to identify hydrological processes in montane catchments. Results of precipitation demonstrate that monsoon and altitude effects are two principal processes affecting δ and deuterium excess (d^E) values of inland precipitation in central Taiwan. Furthermore, slope and intercept values of summer and winter local meteoric water line are modified by secondary evaporation effects such as moisture recycling and raindrop evaporation. Additionally, stream water's results indicate that differences in δ values among stream waters reflect isotopic altitude effect whereby lower values are more evident in stream water originating from high‐elevation catchments than low‐elevation catchments. Comparison of the isotopic results between precipitation and stream water indicates that summer precipitation containing recycled moisture is the most important water source for the studied stream waters and indicates that catchment effect and base flow contribution are the two major hydrological processes affecting mountain stream hydrology. The hydrological processes identified by the isotopic study re‐stress the important role of forests in mountain hydrology. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparison of the soil physical properties and hydrological processes in two different forest type catchments

Water Resources - Soil physical properties and hydrological processes were analyzed in two experimental catchments with different forest types: one catchment is covered mostly with conifer type...     

Investigating hydrological regimes and processes in a set of catchments with temporary waters in Mediterranean Europe

Abstract

Seven catchments of diverse size in Mediterranean Europe were investigated in order to understand the main aspects of their hydrological functioning. The methods included the analysis of daily and monthly precipitation, monthly potential evapotranspiration rates, flow duration curves, rainfall—runoff relationships and catchment internal data for the smaller and more instrumented catchments. The results showed that the catchments were less “dry” than initially considered. Only one of them was really semi-arid throughout the year. All the remaining catchments showed wet seasons when precipitation exceeded potential evapotrans-piration, allowing aquifer recharge, “wet” runoff generation mechanisms and relevant baseflow contribution. Nevertheless, local infiltration excess (Hortonian) overland flow was inferred during summer storms in some catchments and urban overland flow in some others. The roles of karstic groundwater, human disturbance and low winter temperatures were identified as having an important impact on the hydrological regime in some of the catchments.     

Lumped parameter sensitivity analysis of a distributed hydrological model within tropical and temperate catchments

Parameter sensitivity of the Distributed Hydrology‐Soil‐Vegetation Model (DHSVM) was studied in two contrasting environments: (1) Pang Khum Experimental Watershed (PKEW) in tropical northern Thailand; and (2) Cedar River basin (CRB) in Washington State of the temperate US Pacific Northwest. The analysis shows that for both basins, the most sensitive soil parameters were porosity, lateral saturated hydraulic conductivity, and the exponential decrease rate of lateral saturated hydraulic conductivity with soil depth. The most sensitive vegetation parameters were leaf area index, vegetation height, vapour pressure deficit, minimum stomatal resistance (for both grassland and forest scenarios), hemisphere fractional coverage, overstory fractional coverage, and trunk space (for the forest scenario only). Parameter sensitivity was basin‐specific, with the humid, temperate CRB being more influenced by vegetation parameters, while tropical PKEW was more influenced by soil properties. Increases and decreases in parameter values resulted in opposite and unequal changes in bias and root mean square error (RMSE), indicating the non‐linearity of physical process represented in the hydrological model. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of precipitation and temperature changes on hydrological responses of small-scale catchments in the Ethiopian Highlands

The hydrological response of catchments with different rainfall patterns was assessed to understand the availability of blue and green water and the impacts of changing precipitation and temperature in the Ethiopian Highlands. Monthly discharge of three small-scale catchments was simulated, calibrated, and validated with a dataset of more than 30 years. Different temperature and precipitation scenarios were used to compare the hydrological responses in all three catchments. Results indicate that runoff reacts disproportionately strongly to precipitation and temperature changes: a 24% increase in precipitation led to a 50% increase in average annual runoff, and an average annual rainfall–runoff ratio that was 20% higher. An increase in temperature led to an increase of evapotranspiration and resulted in a decrease in the rainfall–runoff ratio. But a comparison of combined results with different climate change scenarios shows that downstream stakeholders can expect a higher share of available blue water in the future.