I. Kazemi Roshkhari, A. Asadi Vaighan, M. Azari,
Volume 28, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)
Due to climate change and human activities, the quality and quantity of water have become the most important concern of most of the countries in the world. In addition, changes in land use and climate are known as two important and influential factors in discharge. In this research, four climate change models including
HADGEM2-ES, GISS-E-R, CSIRO-M-K-3-6-0, and CNRM-CM5.0 under two extreme scenarios RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 were used as climate change scenarios in the future period of 2020-2050. The future land use scenario (2050) was prepared using the CA-Markov algorithm in IDRISI software using land use maps in 1983 and 2020. The SWAT model was calibrated to better simulate hydrological processes from 1984 to 2012 and validated from 2013 to 2019 and was used to evaluate the separate and combined effects of climate change and land use on discharge. The prediction of the climate change impact on discharge showed a decrease in most of the models under the two scenarios RCP2.6 and RCP8.5. The average maximum decrease and increase under the RCP2.6 scenario is 60 and 30 percent, respectively. This significant reduction is greater than that predicted under the RCP8.5 scenario. Examining the combined effects of climate and land use change revealed that the average decrease in discharge in the months of October, November, December, and January under two scenarios is 46.2 and 58%, respectively. The average increase in discharge is predicted to be 47% under the RCP8.5 in the months of April and May in the HadGEM2ES.
