Hydrological impacts of land use/land cover change in a large river basin in central–northern Thailand
Pakorn Petchprayoon,a Peter D. Blanken,a* Chaiwat Ekkawatpanit,b and Khalid Husseinc
a Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
b Civil Engineering Department, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand
c Earth Science & Observation Center (ESOC), CIRES, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to determine the hydrological impacts of land use/land cover (LULC) change in the Yom watershed in central–northern Thailand over a 15-year period using an integration of remote sensing, Geographic Information System, statistical methods, and hydrological modelling. The LULC changes showed an expansion of urban areas by 132% (from 210 km2 in 1990 to 488 km2 in 2006). The Yom River’s daily discharge long-term trend significantly increased at most of the measurement stations (p value <0.05), and the rate of increase in discharge at areas downstream of the rapid urbanisation was significantly greater than that at areas upstream. There were no significant long-term trends in precipitation characteristics in the basin, except for one station. The rate of change in discharge after changes in LULC showed a systematic increase over a range from 0.0039 to 0.0180 m3 s−1 day−1 over a 15-year period, with the increase in urbanised area spanning a range from 81 to 149% in two flood-prone provinces. A rainfall-runoff model simulated a small increase (∼10%) in peak flows. The coupling of surface observations, remote sensing, and rainfall-runoff modeling demonstrated the impacts of changes in LULC on peak river discharge, hence flooding behaviour, of a major river in central–northern Thailand. Copyright 2010 Royal Meteorological Society
KEY WORDS remote sensing; land use change; river discharge; rainfall-runoff model
Received 6 October 2008; Revised 15 January 2010; Accepted 18 February 2010
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY
Int. J. Climatol. 30: 1917–1930 (2010)
Published online 30 March 2010 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/joc.2131
