Simulating the hydrological response to climate change in a Southern Alberta watershed
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Date
2007
Authors
Forbes, Katharine A.
University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Geography
Abstract
The current body of research in western North America indicates that water
resources in the Oldman Basin are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The
objectives of this thesis were to parameterize and verify the ACRU hydrological
modelling system for the 256 km2 Beaver Creek watershed, a tributary to the Oldman
River. The ACRU model successfully simulated monthly volumes of the observed
hydrological record (r2 =0.78), and simulated the behaviour of the mean annual
hydrograph with sufficient accuracy to assess the mean change in future hydrological
response over 30-year simulation periods. A range of global climate model (GCM)
projections were used to perturb the 1961-1990 baseline climate record using the delta
downscaling technique, which resulted in the input for future hydrological simulations.
Five potential future hydrological regimes were compared to the 1961-1990 baseline
conditions to determine the net effect of climate change on the hydrological regime of the
Beaver Creek catchment over three time periods of 2020, 2050 and 2080. Despite annual projections for a warmer and wetter climate in this region, the majority of the simulations indicated that the seasonal changes in climate resulted in a shift of the seasonal streamflow distribution. The results indicated an increase in winter and spring streamflow volumes and a reduction of summer and fall streamflow volumes over all time periods, relative to the baseline conditions (1961-1990) in 4 of the 5 scenarios.
Description
Keywords
Beaver Creek watershed , Oldman River Basin , hydrological regime projections , seasonal streamflow distribution projections , hydrological simulations