| Title: | Improved prediction of stream flow based on updating land cover maps with remotely sensed forest change detection |
| Authors: | Hernandez A.J., S.P. Healey, H. Huang and R.D. Ramsey |
| Year: | 2018 |
| Journal: | Forests |
| Volume (Issue): | 9(6) |
| Pages: | |
| Article ID: | 317 |
| DOI: | 10.3390/f9060317 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | hydrologic only |
| Primary Application Category: | land use change |
| Secondary Application Category: | hydrologic assessment |
| Watershed Description: | Ten watersheds that ranged in size from 50.1 to 3,360.9 km^2, located in western Montana, central or northeast Idaho, central Nevada and northeast Utah, U.S. |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | The water balance in a watershed can be disrupted by forest disturbances such as harvests
and fires. Techniques to accurately and efficiently map forest cover changes due to disturbance
are evolving quickly, and it is of interest to ask how useful maps of different types of disturbances
over time can be in the prediction of water yield. We assessed the benefits of using land cover
maps produced at annual vs. five-year intervals in the prediction of monthly streamflows across
10 watersheds contained entirely within the US National Forest System. We found that annually
updating land cover maps with forest disturbance data significantly improved water yield predictions
using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT; p < 0.01 improvement for both the Nash–Sutcliffe
efficiency measure and the ratio of the root mean square error to the standard deviation of the
measured data). Improvement related to using annually updated land cover maps was directly
related to the amount of disturbance observed in a watershed. Our results lay a foundation to apply
new high-resolution disturbance datasets in the field of hydrologic modeling to monitor ungauged
watersheds and to explore potential water yield changes in watersheds if climate conditions or
management practices were to change forest disturbance processes. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | forest disturbance; time series; SWAT; water dynamics; land cover |