Land-Use Changes: Floodplains, Dams, and Reservoirs – Integrated River Basins Management

2021 ◽  
pp. 531-607
Author(s):  
Susanta Kumar Chakraborty
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-706
Author(s):  
Manijeh Ghahroudi Tali ◽  
◽  
Jamileh Tavakolinia ◽  
Anita Majidi Heravi ◽  
◽  
...  

Many factors affect the flood vulnerability of the northwestern areas of Tehran. Urban infrastructure and the development of urban areas in river basins have changed the natural drainage patterns in the region. This has resulted in flooding, inundation, and higher costs for urban maintenance. Tehran is located on the southern slopes of the Alborz mountain range and downstream from several basins. The expansion of the urban area into elevated areas has exposed the city to many disasters including flooding. Districts 2 and 5 in the northwestern area of Tehran are vulnerable to floods because of their close vicinity to expansive basins, a high proportion of construction projects, a high population and housing density, land use changes, the development of the urban areas in river basins, and the unsuitable exploitation of watercourses. This research used topographic, land use, climatic, and hydrometric data. Criteria were selected, weighted by an analytic hierarchy process, and combined by fuzzy functions to obtain a vulnerability map. To understand the significant factors, we applied water profiles and hydrographs to determine priorities through a multi-layer perceptron network. The final vulnerability map indicated that the most vulnerable areas are outside the urban lands near the river channels. The results also indicated that a combination of urban factors and drainage basin agents intensified the vulnerability of the study area. Although the near channel areas outside the urban areas are more vulnerable to flooding, other factors, including deteriorated fabric, curvature profile, and curvature, are significant in urban areas.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 39-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Havlíček ◽  
Renata Pavelková ◽  
Jindřich Frajer ◽  
Hana Skokanová

Abstract The long-term development of water bodies is investigated in this article using the cases of two river basins with similar natural conditions: the Kyjovka and Trkmanka River Basins in the Czech Republic. Using old topographic maps, land use development was assessed and the analysis of driving forces of land use changes was carried out. The essential land use changes in these areas are connected with the processes of agricultural intensification and urbanisation. The largest area of water bodies was recorded in both river basins in 1763. In the second half of the 19th century, the disappearance of most water bodies in the two basins was significantly affected by the above-mentioned driving forces. After World War II, some of the water bodies in the Kyjovka River Basin were restored and new ponds were established. In contrast, no significant water bodies were restored in the Trkmanka River Basin.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 5065-5088 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara A. Kelly ◽  
Zeinab Takbiri ◽  
Patrick Belmont ◽  
Efi Foufoula-Georgiou

Abstract. Complete transformations of land cover from prairie, wetlands, and hardwood forests to row crop agriculture and urban centers are thought to have caused profound changes in hydrology in the Upper Midwestern US since the 1800s. In this study, we investigate four large (23 000–69 000 km2) Midwest river basins that span climate and land use gradients to understand how climate and agricultural drainage have influenced basin hydrology over the last 79 years. We use daily, monthly, and annual flow metrics to document streamflow changes and discuss those changes in the context of precipitation and land use changes. Since 1935, flow, precipitation, artificial drainage extent, and corn and soybean acreage have increased across the region. In extensively drained basins, we observe 2 to 4 fold increases in low flows and 1.5 to 3 fold increases in high and extreme flows. Using a water budget, we determined that the storage term has decreased in intensively drained and cultivated basins by 30–200 % since 1975, but increased by roughly 30 % in the less agricultural basin. Storage has generally decreased during spring and summer months and increased during fall and winter months in all watersheds. Thus, the loss of storage and enhanced hydrologic connectivity and efficiency imparted by artificial agricultural drainage appear to have amplified the streamflow response to precipitation increases in the Midwest. Future increases in precipitation are likely to further intensify drainage practices and increase streamflows. Increased streamflow has implications for flood risk, channel adjustment, and sediment and nutrient transport and presents unique challenges for agriculture and water resource management in the Midwest. Better documentation of existing and future drain tile and ditch installation is needed to further understand the role of climate versus drainage across multiple spatial and temporal scales.


2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gojko NIKOLIC ◽  
Velibor SPALEVIC ◽  
Milic CUROVIC ◽  
Abdulvahed KHALEDI DARVISHAN ◽  
Goran SKATARIC ◽  
...  

Vegetation cover change in all the river basins leads to the changes of hydrologic response, soil erosion and sediment dynamics characteristics. Those changes are often viewed as main cause of anthropogenic and accelerated erosion rates in short term and one of the main reasons of climate change in long term. The effects of vegetation cover changes on various parts of water balance and hydrological cycle has to be deeply studied because of its important role on mankind future. The aim of present research was therefore to simulate the responses of soil erosion processes by using a process-oriented soil erosion model IntErO, with the different settings of land use for the years 1977, 1987, 1997, 2006 (2007) and 2016 (2017) in Orahovacka Rijeka watershed; a pilot river basin of the Polimlje Region for the northeastern part of Montenegro. For the current state of land use, calculated peak discharge for the Orahovacka Rijeka was 174-175 m3 s-1 (the incidence of 100 years) and there is a possibility for large flood waves to appear in the studied basin. Real soil losses, Gyear, were calculated on 2614-2921 m3 year-1, specific 229-256 m3 km-2 year-1 (1977-2017). The value of Z coefficient range from 0.444 to 0.478 and indicates that the river basin belongs to III destruction category. The strength of the erosion process is medium, and according to the erosion type, it is surface erosion. According to our analysis the land use changes in the last 40 years influenced the increase of the soil erosion intensity for 11% in the study watershed. Further studies should be focused on the detailed analysis of the land use changes trends with the other river basins at the national level, closely following responses of soil erosion to the changed land use structure. The results and approach also should be used by policymakers in all national natural resources organizations to highlight the role of management.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara A. Kelly ◽  
Zeinab Takbiri ◽  
Patrick Belmont ◽  
Efi Foufoula-Georgiou

Abstract. Complete transformations of land cover from prairie, wetlands, and hardwood forests to row crop agriculture and urban centers are thought to have caused profound changes in hydrology in the Upper Midwestern US since the 1800s. In this study, we investigate four large (23,000–69,000 km2) Midwest river basins that span climate and land use gradients to understand how climate and agricultural drainage have influenced basin hydrology over the last 79 years. We use daily, monthly, and annual flow metrics to document streamflow changes and discuss those changes in the context of precipitation and land use changes. Since 1935, flow, precipitation, artificial drainage extent, and corn and soybean acreage have increased across the region. In extensively drained basins, we observe 2 to 4 fold increases in low flows and 1.5 to 3 fold increases in high and extreme flows. Using a water budget, we determined that the storage term has decreased in intensively drained and cultivated basins by 30 %–200 % since 1975, but increased by roughly 30 % in the less agricultural basin. Storage has generally decreased during spring and summer months and increased during fall and winter months in all watersheds. Thus, the loss of storage and enhanced hydrologic connectivity and efficiency imparted by artificial agricultural drainage appear to have amplified the streamflow response to precipitation increases in the Midwest. Future increases in precipitation are likely to further intensify drainage practices and increase streamflows. Increased streamflow has implications for flood risk, channel adjustment, and sediment and nutrient transport and presents unique challenges for agriculture and water resource management in the Midwest. Better documentation of existing and future drain tile and ditch installation is needed to further understand the role of climate versus drainage across multiple spatial and temporal scales.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1695-1711 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammadreza Hajihosseini ◽  
Hamidreza Hajihosseini ◽  
Saeed Morid ◽  
Majid Delavar ◽  
Martijn J. Booij

Abstract Many river basins are facing a reduction of flows which might be attributed to changes in climate and human activities. This issue is very important in transboundary river basins, where already existing conflicts about shared water resources between riparian countries can easily escalate. The decrease of streamflow in the transboundary Hirmand (Helmand) River is one of the main challenges for water resources management in Iran and Afghanistan. This research aims to quantify the causes of this problem which has a direct impact on the dryness of the Hamoun wetlands being an international Ramsar site. To achieve this, the land use changes in the Middle Helmand Basin (MHB) in Afghanistan were evaluated for three time periods between 1990 and 2011 using remote sensing data and the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) Model for understanding watershed response to environmental changes. It was concluded that the total irrigated area in the region has increased from 103,000 ha in 1990 to 122,000 ha in 2001 and 167,000 ha in 2011 (62% increase). According to the results, the average annual discharge when adapting the land use during the simulations was 4,787 million cubic meters (MCM)/year and while employing the land use of 1990 from the beginning of the simulations, the average annual discharge was 5,133 MCM/year. Therefore, the agricultural developments in the Helmand basin decreased the discharge with about 346 MCM/year accompanying an increase of 64,000 ha in an irrigated area in MHB after 1990. Notably, the impact of land use change increases significantly for more recent periods and causes a reduction of 810 MCM in annual streamflow for the MHB. The amount of water depletion (i.e. actual evapotranspiration) per hectare has increased from 5,690 in 1985 to 7,320 m3 in 2012. The applied methodology of this study is useful to cope with such a data scarcity region. It can help quantify the impact of land use change on the region and formulates strategies that can improve the situation between Iran and Afghanistan.


Geographies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-332
Author(s):  
Paolo Magliulo ◽  
Angelo Cusano ◽  
Filippo Russo

In river basins, the deep interrelationships between land-use changes, soil erosion and rivers and shoreline dynamics are clearer than at a national or regional scale. Southern Italy is an ecologically fragile, desertification-prone territory where land-use changes in the last decades were significant. Notwithstanding this, studies dealing with multidecadal land-use changes in large-sized river basins of Southern Italy and their implications on soil erosion are missing. In this study, we assessed the land-use changes that occurred between 1960 and 2012 in the 3245 km2-wide Sele River basin. We carried out GIS-aided comparisons and analysis of two land-use maps and interpreted the results in terms of soil erosion intensity based on a detailed review of the scientific literature. The results confirmed the trend of the inner areas of Italy and, in particular, of the Campania region moving towards more pristine conditions, with an increase in forest cover, mainly at the expense of grasslands. Agricultural areas remained substantially unchanged, while the area of urban settlements increased. The diffuse afforestation of slopes suggested an overall decrease in soil erosion intensity, which was fully coherent with the geomorphological evolution of both the Sele River and local shoreline reported in literature.


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