Hydrologic modelling to assess the climate change impacts in a Southern Ontario watershed

In Southern Ontario, the Canard River watershed is the largest subwatershed of the Detroit River watershed on the Canadian side. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was implemented in the Canard River Watershed to understand the hydrologic regime and assess the impacts of potential future climate change on the hydrology of the watershed. The SWAT model was calibrated and validated against observed streamflow data. The Nash-Suttcliffe efficiencies of the model for monthly streamflow predictions were 0.81 and 0.83, respectively, during the calibration and validation periods. The LARS-WG, weather generator was employed to generate daily future weather data at local scale using the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM) outputs under SRES A2 scenario for the years 2041 to 2070. It was found from the model results that the average annual streamflow could be increased by 12% compared to that over the base period from 1961 to 1990. The results also indicated that streamflow would be increased significantly in spring and winter, but would be decreased in fall due to the projected future climate change scenarios.