| Title: | Hydrologic response to land use change in a large basin in eastern Amazon |
| Authors: | Dos Santos, V., F. Laurent, C. Abe and F. Messner |
| Year: | 2018 |
| Journal: | Water |
| Volume (Issue): | 10(4) |
| Pages: | |
| Article ID: | 429 |
| DOI: | 10.3390/w10040429 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | hydrologic only |
| Primary Application Category: | land use change |
| Secondary Application Category: | hydrologic assessment |
| Watershed Description: | 142,000 km^2 Iriri River, which is a tributary of the Xingu River that drains portions of the state of Mato Grosso and Pará in the eastern Amazonian region in north central Brazil. |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | Accelerated land use changes in the Brazilian Amazonian region over the last four decades
have raised questions about potential consequences for local hydrology. Under the hypothesis of a
lack of frontier governance, projections of future changes in the Amazon basin suggest that 20–30%
or more of this basin could be deforested in the next 40 years. This could trigger a cascade of negative
impacts on water resources. In this study, we examined how a future conversion of the forest into
pasture would influence streamflow and water balance components by using a conceptual and
semi-distributed hydrological model in a large (142,000 km2) forested basin: specifically, the Iriri
River basin in the Brazilian Amazon. The results showed that the land use change could substantially
alter the water balance components of the originally forested basin. For example, an increase of over
57% in pasture areas increased a simulated annual streamflow by ~6.5% and had a significant impact
on evapotranspiration, surface runoff, and percolation. Our findings emphasize the importance of
protected areas for conservation strategies in the Brazilian Amazonian region. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | Amazon; land use change; streamflow; water balance components; SWAT model |