| Title: | Assessing climate change impacts on streamflow, sediment and nutrient loadings of the Minija River (Lithuania): A hillslope watershed discretization application with high-resolution spatial inputs |
| Authors: | Čerkasova, N., G. Umgiesser and A. Ertürk |
| Year: | 2019 |
| Journal: | Water |
| Volume (Issue): | 11(4) |
| Pages: | 676 |
| Article ID: | |
| DOI: | 10.3390/w11040676 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | hydrologic and pollutant |
| Primary Application Category: | climate change assessment |
| Secondary Application Category: | multi-site calibration or testing approach |
| Watershed Description: | 3097.04 km^2 Minija River, with a length of 201.8 km and annual average discharge of 38.7 m^3/s, which is part of the Curonian Lagoon drainage basin in the coastal region of western Lithuania. |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | In this paper we focus on the model setup scheme for medium-size watershed with high resolution, multi-site calibration, and present results on the possible changes of the Minija River in flow, sediment load, total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP) load in the near-term (up to 2050) and long-term (up to 2099) in the light of climate change (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios) under business-as-usual conditions. The SWAT model for the Minija River basin was setup by using the developed Matlab (SWAT-LAB) scripts for a highly customized watershed configuration that addresses the specific needs of the project objective. We performed the watershed delineation by combining sub-basin and hillslope discretization schemes. We defined the HRUs by aggregating the topographic, land use, soil, and administrative unit features of the area. A multisite manual calibration approach was adopted to calibrate and validate the model, achieving good to satisfactory results across different sub-basins of the area for flow, sediments and nutrient loads (TP and TN). After completing the climate change scenario calculations, we found that a net decrease of flow (up to 35%), TN (up to 34%), and TP (up to 50%) loads are projected under both scenarios. Furthermore, we explored the changes in the streamflow composition and provide new insight on the reason of projected nutrient load decrease. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | hillslope discretization, SWAT model, water quality, Minija River watershed, climate change |