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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2019

  • Title: Landscape scenarios and the effects on water partitioning and high flows in New England
  • Primary Author: Andrew Guswa (Smith College)
  • Additional Authors: Brian Hall (Harvard Forest); Jonathan Thompson (Harvard Forest)
  • Abstract:

    Decision makers and water managers throughout New England desire to understand how development and land-use change, especially under a changing climate, will affect high flows, flooding, and stormwater. We use the New England Landscape Futures (NELF) project to demonstrate the potential for translating participatory scenarios to simulations of land use and land cover and the resulting effects on streamflow. In addition to projecting recent trends, four other landscape scenarios were co-designed through a structured process that engaged over 150 stakeholders and scientists from throughout New England.

    Daily streamflows were simulated with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to investigate how high flows vary among the scenarios for the less developed Cocheco River watershed in southeast New Hampshire and the more urbanized Charles River watershed in eastern Massachusetts. The hydrologic response of each land-use scenario was simulated for both historic weather (1999-2017) and downscaled weather for 2049-2067 from the CCSM 4.0-RCP 8.5 model-pathway from the Community Earth System Model.

    Differences among the land-use scenarios led to no differences in average annual water yield and ET. Loss of forest and increase in urban area reduces the baseflow contribution to streamflow while increasing storm runoff. The increase in runoff led to a concomitant increase in the average annual maximum flow, and the effect is larger in the Charles River watershed than in the Cocheco. Under the future climate, a combination of increased precipitation and decreased potential evaporation results in increased streamflow relative to the scenarios modeled with the historic weather. As a fraction of precipitation, surface runoff remains the same, and baseflow increases. Annual maximum flows increased for the future climate, and the effects of land-use change and climate on annual maximum flows are comparable. These water-related results fit into a larger framework for evaluating ecosystem services associated with socially relevant landscape scenarios.

  • Research Category: Watershed Ecology