Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Hydrology and Sediment Yield in the Be River Catchment, Vietnam

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the impact of climate change on hydrology and sediment load in the Be River Catchment using SWAT hydrological model. The calibration and validation results indicate that the SWAT model is a reasonable tool to simulate the impact of environmental change on hydrology and sediment yield for this catchment. Based on the calibrated model, the responses of hydrology and sediment yield to climate change were simulated. Climate change scenarios (A1B emission scenario) were developed from four GCM simulations (CGCM3.1 (T63), CM2.0, CM2.1, and HadCM3). Under the climate change impacts, the simulated results exhibit that the annual streamflow is expected to decrease by 2.4% to 4.4%, and the annual sediment load is projected to change by -1.4% to 4.5% in the future. It is indicated that changes in sediment yield due to climate change are larger than the corresponding changes in streamflow. In addition, climate change causes increases in annual evapotranspiration (0.8% ~ 2.8%) and decreases in groundwater discharge (4.4% ~ 6.14%) and soil water content (2.0% ~ 4.8%).