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

Open access

Download PDF

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..

View full abstract

University of Melbourne Researchers

Murray Peel Author

Andrew Western Author

Related Projects (2)

Systemic and adaptive water governance: lessons for Australia from China and South Africa

The way we manage catchments under climate change is one of Australia’s major public policy challenges. This project will give new direction..

Hydrologic modelling for a changing world

Realistic modelling of streamflow under climate change requires development of new hydrologic modelling techniques that are robust under cha..

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.