Assessing the synergic effect of land use and climate change on the upper Betwa River catchment in Central India under present, past, and future climate scenarios

We use Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to simulate the combined effects of land use/land cover (LU/LC) and climate change on the hydrological response of the Upper Betwa River Catchment (UBRC), a semi-arid region in Central India. We execute this model for two different time periods, 1982-2000 and 2001-2018, using the LU/LC data of 1990 and 2018, respectively. We classified the Landsat satellite images of 1990 and 2018 to obtain the dominant LU/LC classes (water body, built-up, forest, agriculture, and open land) in the catchment. The water body, built-up areas, and cropland have increased by 63%, 65%, and 3%, respectively, whereas forest cover and open land decreased by 16% and 23% in the UBRC from 1990 to 2018. The observed climate data in UBRC shows an increase in the average temperature and decrease in the total rainfall during the period between 1980 to 2018. Once the model is set up, we perform the calibration and validation by using the SWAT Calibration Uncertainty Program (SWAT-CUP). We considered two time periods (1991-1994 and 2001-2007) for the calibration and (1995-1998 and 2008-2014) for the validation. For both these time periods, the calibration and validation result of our model is satisfactory. The output of our calibrated model shows a relative decrease in rainfall (12%), surface runoff (21%), and percolation (9%) in the catchment during the period between 2001-2018 as compared to 1982-2000. Finally, we simulate the surface runoff and percolation in the UBRC using the future climate change scenario. We used the bias-corrected multi-model ensemble of CMIP6 GCMs for four different climate scenarios (2023-2100) by assuming no change in the existing LU/LC. We do this for two different time slices: one from 2023-2060 and the other from 2061-2100. For all the climate scenarios, rainfall and surface runoff in the catchment are expected to decrease by 15-40% and 50-79% as compared to the baseline period of 1982-2018. Percolation in the catchment will have a mixed response. It is expected to decrease by 18% in the middle part of the catchment and increase about 25% in the remaining parts of the catchment.

Automated summary

We used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to simulate the combined effects of land use/land cover (LU/LC) and climate change on the hydrological response of the Upper Betwa River Catchment (UBRC) in Central India. The results showed changes in LU/LC and observed climate data, and the calibrated model revealed a decrease in rainfall, surface runoff, and percolation in the catchment from 2001-2018 compared to 1982-2000. Additionally, future climate change scenarios suggested a further decrease in rainfall and surface runoff, while percolation had a mixed response in different parts of the catchment.