Including the dynamic relationship between climatic variables and leaf area index in a hydrological model to improve streamflow prediction under a changing climate

ZK Tesemma; Y Wei; MC Peel; AW Western

Journal article

Including the dynamic relationship between climatic variables and leaf area index in a hydrological model to improve streamflow prediction under a changing climate

ZK Tesemma, Y Wei, MC Peel, AW Western

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences | COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH | Published : 2015

DOI: 10.5194/hess-19-2821-2015

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Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change is projected to enrich the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, change vegetation dynamics and influence the availability of water at the catchment scale. This study combines a nonlinear model for estimating changes in leaf area index (LAI) due to climatic fluctuations with the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) hydrological model to improve catchment streamflow prediction under a changing climate. The combined model was applied to 13 gauged sub-catchments with different land cover types (crop, pasture and tree) in the Goulburn-Broken catchment, Australia, for the "Millennium Drought" (1997-2009) relative to the period 1983-1995, and for two future periods (2021-205..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Murray Peel Author

Andrew Western Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) (project no: ARC LP100100546, ARC FT130100274 and ARC FT120100130), the Natural Science Foundation of China (project no: 91125007) and the Commonwealth of Australia under the Australia China Science and Research Fund (project no: ACSRF800). We would like to thank the University of Melbourne for providing a scholarship to the first author. We thank editor Ciaran Harman and two anonymous reviewers for comments that improved this manuscript.