Storylines of combined future land use and climate scenarios and their hydrological impacts in an Alpine catchment (Brixental/Austria)

Strasser, Ulrich; Förster, Kristian; Formayer, Herbert; Hofmeister, Florentin; Marke, Thomas; Meißl, Gertraud; Nadeem, Imran; Stotten, Rike; Schermer, Markus

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.12.077

Cited by 24 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Interestingly enough, the increase in the forest area has a tendency to be higher under conditions of moderate climate change than in the extreme climate change scenario. Land-use changes impact on the availability of water in the long run (for a detailed account of the hydrological results, see Strasser et al [58]).…”

Section: Results For Land-use Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For moderate climate change, the peak will remain in April/May, but the differences caused by the different land-use evolutions will become even more pronounced. Although the results may be subject to some uncertainties arising from the climate scenarios and the parameterization of the hydrological model [58], they clearly indicate that changes in land use can have a remarkable effect on the availability of water in Alpine catchments. The results of the water balance simulations suggest that an increase in forest cover implies a decrease in streamflow, mainly due to higher evapotranspiration.…”

Section: Consequences On Water Availabilitymentioning

confidence: 96%

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The Role of Transdisciplinary Research for Agricultural Climate Change Adaptation Strategies

et al. 2018

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While science widely acknowledges the necessity of climate change adaptation (CCA), concrete strategies for CCA by major land-use actor groups at a local level are largely missing. Immediate economic challenges often prevent the establishment of long-term collective strategies. However, collective decisions on a communal level regarding land use are crucial for CCA strategies, given the interdependencies of farming with forestry, tourism, and other economic sectors, especially in mountain areas. This paper presents inter- and trans-disciplinary learning processes, which have evolved into a project modelling the hydrological effects of combined future climate and land-use changes based on the combined scenarios of climate and socio-economic change in an Alpine valley (Brixental in Tyrol/Austria). Locally adapted scenarios illustrate future land-use changes as a result of both climate change and different socio-economic developments. The hydrological results show how an increase in the forested area reduces streamflow (as a measure of water availability) in the long term. For local stakeholders, the process demonstrated clearly the interdependence of different economic sectors and the necessity for collective action at a regional level to influence socio-economic development. Moreover, it made them aware that local decisions on future land use may influence the effects of climate change. Consistent storylines helped stakeholders to visualize a desired future and to see their scope of influence. The transdisciplinary research process allowed local stakeholders to translate the hydrological modelling results into a concrete local CCA strategy.

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Section: Results For Land-use Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Consequences On Water Availabilitymentioning

confidence: 96%

The Role of Transdisciplinary Research for Agricultural Climate Change Adaptation Strategies

et al. 2018

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“…Caution should therefore be taken in interpreting this study's results, as landcover and soil properties could also change in the warmer climate (Rasouli et al, 2019). Modelling studies in the southern Rocky Mountains, USA, and the eastern European Alps examine future changes in basin hydrology and water availability by coupling climate change and land-cover disturbance and suggest that the feedbacks of land-cover disturbance with a warmer climate should be considered when assessing future impacts on mountain hydrology (Buma and Livneh, 2015;McDowell et al, 2016;Bennett et al, 2018;Strasser et al, 2019). However, land-cover changes such as forest expansion into the alpine ecozone under a warmer climate are less likely in the Canadian Rockies than elsewhere because of the limitations imposed by geological, microclimate, and geomorphological processes on tree establishment above current treelines (Macias-Fauria and Johnson, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Physically based hydrological models are effective ways to analyse the hydrological response to climate change, as they can capture the complex hydrological processes governing streamflow generation and can be extrapolated beyond the hydrometeorological conditions under which they were developed. Empirical snowmelt modelling methods that use temperatureindex techniques are inappropriate in cold mountain regions (Swanson, 1998) and generally do not perform well because of their lack of physical basis, need for calibration from sparse snowmelt observations, and neglect of sublimation contributions to ablation (Walter et al, 2005;Pomeroy et al, 2005. The Cold Regions Hydrological Modelling platform (CRHM;Pomeroy et al, 2007Pomeroy et al, , 2016) offers a full suite of streamflow generation processes that commonly operate in the Canadian Rockies, such as wind redistribution of snow, snow avalanching, canopy snow and rain interception, sublimation, drip and unloading from forest canopies, infiltration to frozen and unfrozen soils, overland and detention flow, hillslope sub-surface water redistribution, and evapotranspiration.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diagnosis of future changes in hydrology for a Canadian Rockies headwater basin

Fang

Pomeroy

2020

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Climate change is anticipated to impact the hydrology of the Saskatchewan River, which originates in the Canadian Rockies mountain range. To better understand the climate change impacts in the mountain headwaters of this basin, a physically based hydrological model was developed for this basin using the Cold Regions Hydrological Modelling platform (CRHM) for Marmot Creek Research Basin (∼9.4 km2), located in the Front Ranges of the Canadian Rockies. Marmot Creek is composed of ecozones ranging from montane forests to alpine tundra and alpine exposed rock and includes both large and small clearcuts. The model included blowing and intercepted snow redistribution, sublimation, energy-balance snowmelt, slope and canopy effects on melt, Penman–Monteith evapotranspiration, infiltration to frozen and unfrozen soils, hillslope hydrology, streamflow routing, and groundwater components and was parameterised without calibration from streamflow. Near-surface outputs from the 4 km Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model were bias-corrected using the quantile delta mapping method with respect to meteorological data from five stations located from low-elevation montane forests to alpine ridgetops and running over October 2005–September 2013. The bias-corrected WRF outputs during a current period (2005–2013) and a future pseudo global warming period (PGW, 2091–2099) were used to drive model simulations to assess changes in Marmot Creek's hydrology. Under a “business-as-usual” forcing scenario, Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) in PGW, the basin will warm up by 4.7 ∘C and receive 16 % more precipitation, which will lead to a 40 mm decline in seasonal peak snowpack, 84 mm decrease in snowmelt volume, 0.2 mm d−1 slower melt rate, and 49 d shorter snow-cover duration. The alpine snow season will be shortened by almost 1.5 months, but at some lower elevations there will be large decreases in peak snowpack (∼45 %) in addition to a shorter snow season. Declines in the peak snowpack will be much greater in clearcuts than under mature forest canopies. In alpine and treeline ecozones, blowing snow transport and sublimation will be suppressed by higher-threshold wind speeds for transport, in forest ecozones, sublimation losses from intercepted snow will decrease due to faster unloading and drip, and throughout the basin, evapotranspiration will increase due to a longer snow-free season and more rainfall. Runoff will begin earlier in all ecozones, but, as a result of variability in surface and subsurface hydrology, forested and alpine ecozones will generate the greatest runoff volumetric increases, ranging from 12 % to 25 %, whereas the treeline ecozone will have a small (2 %) decrease in runoff volume due to decreased melt volumes from smaller snowdrifts. The shift in timing in streamflow will be notable, with 236 % higher flows in spring months and 12 % lower flows in summer and 13 % higher flows in early fall. Overall, Marmot Creek's annual streamflow discharge will increase by 18 % with PGW, without a change in its streamflow generation efficiency, despite its basin shifting from primarily snowmelt runoff towards rainfall-dominated runoff generation.

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“…Thus, it is an ideal research catchment for studying the runoff reaction at different system states. Since 2008, we have executed comprehensive investigations, including topographical-geomorphological analyses (Meißl et al, 2011), pedological mapping, soil analyses, and investigations of the earthworm abundance (Geitner et al, 2014;, infiltration measurements (Ruggenthaler et al, 2016) as well as rainfall simulations (Mayerhofer et al, 2017), partly conducted with dye tracers, soil moisture measurements (Meißl et al, 2020), snow cover modelling (Förster, Garvelmann, Meißl, & Strasser, 2018), modelling of the effect of climate (Meißl, Geitner, Tusch, Schöberl, & Stötter, 2017) and land use changes (Schermer et al, 2018;Strasser et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brixenbach research catchment: Quantification of runoff process proportions in a small Alpine catchment depending on soil moisture states and precipitation characteristics

Meißl

Geitner

Batliner

et al. 2021

Hydrological Processes

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The Brixenbach valley is a small Alpine torrent catchment (9.2 km2, 820–1950 m a.s.l., 47.45°, 12.26°) in Tyrol, Austria. Intensive hydrological research in the catchment since more than 12 years, including a hydrogeological survey, pedological and land use mapping, measurements of precipitation, runoff, soil moisture and infiltration as well as the conduction of rainfall simulations, has contributed to understand the hydrological response of the catchment, its subcatchments and specific sites. The paper presents a synthesis of the research in form of runoff process maps for different soil moisture states and precipitation characteristics, derived with the aid of a newly developed Soil‐hydrological model. These maps clearly visualize the differing runoff reaction of different subcatchments. The pasture dominated areas produce high surface flow rates during short precipitation events (1 h, 86 mm) with high rainfall intensity, whilst the forested areas often develop shallow subsurface flow. Dry preconditions lead to a slight reduction of surface flow, long rainfall events (24 h, 170 mm) to a dominance of deep subsurface flow and percolation.

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Storylines of combined future land use and climate scenarios and their hydrological impacts in an Alpine catchment (Brixental/Austria)

Cited by 24 publications

References 51 publications

The Role of Transdisciplinary Research for Agricultural Climate Change Adaptation Strategies

The Role of Transdisciplinary Research for Agricultural Climate Change Adaptation Strategies

Diagnosis of future changes in hydrology for a Canadian Rockies headwater basin

Brixenbach research catchment: Quantification of runoff process proportions in a small Alpine catchment depending on soil moisture states and precipitation characteristics

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