Quantifying the effects of urbanization on floods in a changing environment to promote water security — A case study of two adjacent basins in Texas

Shao, Manqing; Zhao, Gang; Kao, Shih-Chieh; Cuo, Lan; Rankin, Cheryl; Gao, Huilin

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125154

Title: Quantifying the effects of urbanization on floods in a changing environment to promote water security — A case study of two adjacent basins in Texas

Journal Article · Sat Jun 06 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Journal of Hydrology

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125154· OSTI ID:1649433

^[1]; Zhao, Gang ^[1];

^[2]; Cuo, Lan ^[3]; Rankin, Cheryl ^[1]; Gao, Huilin ^[1]

Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States). Zachry Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Inst.
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China). Inst. of Tibetan Plateau Research; Univ. of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China)

The increased occurrence of flood events resulting from urbanization and global climate change is a great threat to water security. To systematically evaluate the impacts of urbanization on floods, here we applied a paired catchments approach to two adjacent river basins in south-central Texas — the San Antonio River Basin (SARB), with fast urbanization; and the Guadalupe River Basin (GRB), with little land cover change. A physics-based distributed hydrological model — the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model, embedded with a multi-purpose reservoir module (DHSVM-Res) — was used to simulate streamflow and reservoir storage. The simulations were conducted under different land cover scenarios, including a newly developed continuous land cover series (CLCS). Holistic analyses were then conducted for the paired basins using three methods: analyzing the selected flood events, detecting change points (CP) of monthly floods, and testing the elasticity of long-term flood regimes. The results suggest that: (1) urbanization may reduce lag time and elevate flood peaks significantly by 3–30% in our study area; (2) when there is little land cover change, changing climate is the major driver of variations in the monthly maximum streamflow (MMS); (3) fast urbanization can amplify streamflow variability, increase MMS significantly, and thus alter the timing of CP; and (4) the mean MMS of observed streamflow in the SARB has increased by as much as 75.7% from the pre-CP to post-CP periods. This comprehensive study fills in a gap in our current understanding of the isolated impacts of urbanization on flooding and is expected to support future explorations of anthropogenic influences on floods.

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Research Organization:: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Water Power Technologies Office; National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC05-00OR22725; CBET-1454297; CBET-1805584

OSTI ID:: 1649433

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1633680

Journal Information:: Journal of Hydrology, Vol. 589; ISSN 0022-1694

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
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Title: Quantifying the effects of urbanization on floods in a changing environment to promote water security — A case study of two adjacent basins in Texas

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