Impacts of combined and separate land cover and climate changes on hydrologic responses of Dhidhessa River basin, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

The combined effects of climate and land cover changes influence hydrologic responses of a basin in an offsetting or synergistic manner depending on the nature and severity of the changes. As such, estimating the impacts of these environmental changes on hydrologic responses is crucial for planning water resources management. However, such a comprehensive study is missing in most basins of Ethiopia, particularly in the Dhidhessa River basin (DRB). The aim of this study is, therefore, to quantify the combined and separate impacts of land cover and climate changes on multiple hydrologic variables for the DRB. The Calibrated Soil and Water Analysis Tool (SWAT) model and statistical techniques were integrated for this study. Quantifying the separate and combined effects of land cover and climate changes on multiple hydrologic responses at a local scale, and determining the relative contribution of the changes are the strength of this study. The result indicated better performance of the SWAT model in simulating water balance components for the DRB. Significant changes in hydrologic responses were observed in response to the land cover changes, and the increasing trends of temperature and rainfall observed during the last 30 years in DRB. The result showed increasing actual evapotranspiration (AET), streamflow, and surface runoff while decreasing groundwater recharge. Surface runoff was more affected by land cover change than by climate change, whereas streamflow and AET were more affected by climate change than land cover change during the last 30 years in the basin. The combined effects of land cover and climate changes played an offsetting effect on groundwater recharge and AET. Overall, the simulated hydrologic responses will have negative effects on water resource availability and agricultural production in the basin and the surroundings. Therefore, implementing integrated watershed management strategies, such as soil and water conservation and afforestation, could minimize the negative impact.

KEYWORDS:

• Hydrological responses
• Dhidhessa River basin
• land cover change
• climate change impact

Acknowledgments

We appreciate Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute for partially supporting this research. The CHIRPS2, Landsat series, and SRTM DEM datasets developers are highly acknowledged for providing the data free of charge. We also acknowledged the Ethiopian Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy and the National Meteorological Agency of Ethiopia for providing streamflow and climate data, respectively. Conceptualization of the study, data collection, analysis and interpretation, writing the manuscript: Gizachew Kabite; Reviewing and editing the manuscript: Misgana K. Muleta and Berhan Gessesse. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript: Gizachew Kabite; Misgana K. Muleta, and Berhan Gessesse.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data required for this study, such as CHIRPS2, Landsat series, and SRTM DEM can be accessed from https://www.chc.ucsb.edu/data/chirps and https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/, respectively. The other ground data like observed stream flow can be available upon request.