Drought, groundwater storage and stream flow decline in southwestern Australia

Hughes, James G.; Petrone, Kevin C.; Silberstein, Richard

doi:10.1029/2011gl050797

Cited by 138 publications

(131 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Numerous studies have assessed the trends in river runoff, the factors that influence it, and the relative contributions of different environmental factors (e.g., [35,36]). In the HRB, runoff has shown a significant downward trend in recent decades [28,37,38].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic Impacts of Climate and Land-Use Changes on Surface Runoff in the Mountainous Region of the Haihe River Basin, China

Zheng

Huang

et al. 2018

Advances in Meteorology

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The relative contributions of different factors to the variation in surface runoff have been broadly quantified. However, little attention has been paid to how these relative contributions have changed over time. We analyzed the changes in surface runoff during 1980-2010 in six subbasins in the mountainous region of the Haihe River Basin, one of the most serious water shortage regions in China, and identified the changes in the relative contributions of climate (precipitation and temperature) and land-use to surface runoff decrease. There was a decreasing tendency in surface runoff in all subbasins, four of which had an abrupt change point around 1998. Comparing the relative contributions before and after 1998 in the four subbasins, the average influence of climate was found to decline dramatically from 67.1% to 30.5%, while that of land-use increased from 23.9% to 69.5% mainly due to the increase of forest area. Our results revealed that the primary environmental factor responsible for runoff variations was not constant, and an alternation may accentuate the impact and stimulate an abrupt change of runoff in semiarid and semihumid mountainous regions. This will help in taking tracking measures to deal with the complex water resource challenges according to different driving factors.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic Impacts of Climate and Land-Use Changes on Surface Runoff in the Mountainous Region of the Haihe River Basin, China

Zheng

Huang

et al. 2018

Advances in Meteorology

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“…Analysis of rain gauges indicated that precipitation has been stationary within the watershed during the study period. Non-stationarity in inflows, coupled with stationarity in precipitation, indicate changes in the runoff ratio (defined as flow production per unit precipitation), a common indicator of changing hydrological processes (Hughes et al, 2012).…”

Section: Long-term Hydrological Trends and Human Drivers Of Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial characterization of long-term hydrological change in the Arkavathy watershed adjacent to Bangalore, India

Penny¹,

Srinivasan²,

Dronova³

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The complexity and heterogeneity of human water use over large spatial areas and decadal timescales can impede the understanding of hydrological change, particularly in regions with sparse monitoring of the water cycle. In the Arkavathy watershed in southern India, surface water inflows to major reservoirs decreased over a 40-year period during which urbanization, groundwater depletion, modification of the river network, and changes in agricultural practices also occurred. These multiple, interacting drivers combined with limited hydrological monitoring make attribution of the causes of diminishing water resources in the watershed challenging and impede effective policy responses. To mitigate these challenges, we developed a novel, spatially distributed dataset to understand hydrological change by characterizing the residual trends in surface water extent that remain after controlling for precipitation variations and comparing the trends with historical land use maps to assess human drivers of change. Using an automated classification approach with subpixel unmixing, we classified water extent in nearly 1700 man-made lakes, or tanks, in Landsat images from 1973 to 2010. The classification results compared well with a reference dataset of water extent of tanks (R 2 = 0.95). We modeled the water extent of 42 clusters of tanks in a multiple regression on simple hydrological covariates (including precipitation) and time. Inter-annual variability in precipitation accounted for 63 % of the predicted variability in water extent. However, precipitation did not exhibit statistically significant trends in any part of the watershed. After controlling for precipitation variability, we found statistically significant temporal trends in water extent, both positive and negative, in 13 of the clusters. Based on a water balance argument, we inferred that these trends likely reflect a nonstationary relationship between precipitation and watershed runoff. Independently of precipitation, water extent increased in a region downstream of Bangalore, likely due to increased urban effluents, and declined in the northern portion of the Arkavathy. Comparison of the drying trends with land use indicated that they were most strongly associated with irrigated agriculture, sourced almost exclusively by groundwater. This suggests that groundwater abstraction was a major driver of hydrological change in this watershed. Disaggregating the watershed-scale hydrological response via remote sensing of surface water bodies over multiple decades yielded a spatially resolved characterization of hydrological change in an otherwise poorly monitored watershed. This approach presents an opportunity to understand hydrological change in heavily managed watersheds where surface water bodies integrate upstream runoff and can be delineated using satellite imagery.

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“…We examine a "perceptual" flaw in many RR models and suggest a possible update to model structure. 8 J. D. Hughes and J. Vaze: Non-stationarity and catchment storage forested, and includes the main water catchment for the Perth metropolitan areas (see Hughes et al, 2012). The regolith of the area is deep ( ∼ 40 m) and is very transmissive.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Obvious changes in the relationship follow drought years 2001 and 2010. More recent analysis (Hughes et al, 2012;Kinal and Stoneman, 2012) show that permanent groundwater plays a critical role in runoff generation. Hughes et al (2012), demonstrated that runoff ratio (Q/P ) was strongly related to groundwater elevation in the catchment, particularly in the riparian zone.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recent analysis (Hughes et al, 2012;Kinal and Stoneman, 2012) show that permanent groundwater plays a critical role in runoff generation. Hughes et al (2012), demonstrated that runoff ratio (Q/P ) was strongly related to groundwater elevation in the catchment, particularly in the riparian zone. As such, the groundwater acts as the catchment "memory", and runoff produced from an average year now produces around 150 mm less runoff than the same rainfall in the 1970's.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Non-stationarity driven by long-term change in catchment storage: possibilities and implications

Hughes

Vaze

2015

Proc. IAHS

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Abstract. "Non-stationarity" with reference to hydrology is a term applied to many situations (Milly et al., 2008). While climate change non-stationarity is often examined, these effects can provide a test for assumptions of runoff generation process impliedin rainfall-runoff (RR) models.Observations from South-western Australia (SWA) over the past 40 years show a decline in rainfall and reductions in runoff. Runoff and rainfall relationships in SWA show a significant shift over the past 40 years suggesting a change in runoff generation and catchment state. This has challenged the nature of assumed runoff generation process in SWA as well as the veracity of conceptual RR model structure.We expand on some of the lessons learned from SWA and discuss the climatic and geomorphic conditions that may make reasonable predictions of runoff very difficult with RR models calibrated in traditional ways. Catchment storage has a significant interaction with runoff generation and we examine the situations where these may change in the longer term. We suggest some strategies in terms of model structure and calibration that may improve predictive performance in such situations.

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Drought, groundwater storage and stream flow decline in southwestern Australia

Cited by 138 publications

References 15 publications

Dynamic Impacts of Climate and Land-Use Changes on Surface Runoff in the Mountainous Region of the Haihe River Basin, China

Dynamic Impacts of Climate and Land-Use Changes on Surface Runoff in the Mountainous Region of the Haihe River Basin, China

Spatial characterization of long-term hydrological change in the Arkavathy watershed adjacent to Bangalore, India

Non-stationarity driven by long-term change in catchment storage: possibilities and implications

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