title: Adaptation of land-use demands to the impact of climate change on the hydrological processes of an urbanized watershed.
abstract: The adaptation of land-use patterns is an essential aspect of minimizing the inevitable impact of climate change at regional and local scales; for example, adapting watershed land-use patterns to mitigate the impact of climate change on a region's hydrology. The objective of this study is to simulate and assess a region's ability to adapt to hydrological changes by modifying land-use patterns in the Wu-Du watershed in northern Taiwan. A hydrological GWLF (Generalized Watershed Loading Functions) model is used to simulate three hydrological components, namely, runoff, groundwater and streamflow, based on various land-use scenarios under six global climate models. The land-use allocations are simulated by the CLUE-s model for the various development scenarios. The simulation results show that runoff and streamflow are strongly related to the precipitation levels predicted by different global climate models for the wet and dry seasons, but groundwater cycles are more related to land-use. The effects of climate change on groundwater and runoff can be mitigated by modifying current land-use patterns; and slowing the rate of urbanization would also reduce the impact of climate change on hydrological components. Thus, land-use adaptation on a local/regional scale provides an alternative way to reduce the impacts of global climate change on local hydrology.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioenvironmental Systems Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, Da-an District, Taipei City 106, Taiwan. yplin@ntu.edu.tw
authors.forename: Yu-Pin
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Nien-Ming
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.forename: Li-Chi
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Chiang
authors.forename: Yen-Lan
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Hone-Jay
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Chu
mesh_terms: D057231:Climate Change; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D062070:Hydrology; D014505:Urban Population; D014872:Water Movements