Understanding the hydrologic function of catchments and identifying catchment streamflow sensitivity to climate change

了解流域的水文功能并确定流域径流对气候变化的敏感性

• 批准号: RGPIN-2020-04664
• 负责人: Ameli, Ali
• 金额: $ 2.55万
• 依托单位: University of British Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=740105
• 关键词: Understanding; hydrologic; function; catchments; identifying

Climate change is expected to affect most aspects of streamflow. This will impact all sectors of water resource management such as water allocation and security, and flood/drought risk reduction. Without time-and cost-intensive data collection and modelling, it is difficult to predict how sensitive a catchment's streamflow is to changes in climatic attributes, such as rainfall. This uncertainty stems from limited capacity to assess what water storage compartments exist in a given catchment (especially underground), and how they contribute to streamflow, in times of rain or snowmelt abundance and shortage. Changes to the use of land within a catchment (e.g., agriculture) may also alter how a catchment stores water and generates streamflow-otherwise known as a Catchment's Hydrologic Function (CHF). To efficiently anticipate changes to a catchment's streamflow as a result of climate change, the field of hydrology requires a framework considering easily attainable information to characterize CHF, and how likely it is to alter with various degrees of land use change. Such a framework could lead to scientific strategies to manage water resources, inform land use decisions, and identify priority catchments for protection, under a changing climate. I have advanced the scientific knowledge on CHF and have developed new techniques and metrics to characterize it in different catchments around the world, with important scientific and management implications. However, previous research by myself and others in this context have been conducted only in certain types of environmental settings, leading to inability to develop a widely applicable framework on CHF. Over the next five years, my goal is to assess hydrologic function at a large number of catchments that cover a large spectrum of environmental settings across Canada. In so doing, I will: 1) identify the factors that most strongly determine CHF; 2) develop new scientific equations able to characterize CHF; 3) determine the impact of land-use change on CHF; and ultimately 4) develop the first process-based generalizable framework allowing for the characterization of hydrologic function in poorly-studied catchments across Canada. To achieve these goals, we will leverage our recent scientific and methodological advancements, including new function-based hydrologic model and Canada-wide environmental data linkage, supplemented with data-mining algorithms and laboratory experiments. Plans are in place to train 8 HQP (2 PhD, 3 MSc, 3 UG), using equitable and inclusive recruitment and mentoring practices. The resultant framework will be used to create maps on streamflow sensitivity to climate change and drought/flood vulnerable regions across Canada, and to develop environmentally low-impact strategies for land-use planning. Given the strong gradient of environmental setting considered in this research program, I expect that the findings can be extrapolated to other landscapes around the world.

预计气候变化将影响到径流的大部分方面。这将影响到水资源管理的所有部门，如水分配和安全以及减少水灾/旱灾风险。如果没有时间和成本密集型的数据收集和建模，就很难预测集水区的径流对降雨等气候属性变化的敏感程度。这种不确定性源于评估某一集水区（特别是地下）存在哪些储水空间以及它们在降雨或融雪丰沛和短缺时如何促进径流的能力有限。流域内土地用途的改变（例如，农业）也可能改变集水区蓄水和产生流量的方式--也就是集水区的水文功能（CHF）。为了有效地预测气候变化对流域径流量的影响，水文学领域需要一个框架，考虑到容易获得的信息来描述CHF的特征，以及它有多大可能随着不同程度的土地利用变化而改变。这样一个框架可以导致科学的战略，以管理水资源，为土地使用决策提供信息，并确定在气候变化下需要保护的优先集水区。我推进了CHF的科学知识，并开发了新的技术和指标，以表征它在世界各地不同的集水区，具有重要的科学和管理意义。然而，以前的研究，我和其他人在这方面已经进行了只在某些类型的环境设置，导致无法开发一个广泛适用的框架CHF。在接下来的五年里，我的目标是评估水文功能，在大量的集水区，涵盖了加拿大各地的环境设置的大范围。为此，我将：1）确定最强烈地决定CHF的因素; 2）开发能够表征CHF的新的科学方程; 3）确定土地利用变化对CHF的影响;以及最终4）开发第一个基于过程的可推广框架，允许表征加拿大各地研究不足的集水区的水文功能。为了实现这些目标，我们将利用我们最近的科学和方法进步，包括新的基于函数的水文模型和加拿大范围内的环境数据链接，并辅以数据挖掘算法和实验室实验。已制定计划，采用公平和包容性的征聘和辅导做法，培训8名HQP（2名博士，3名硕士，3名普通工作人员）。由此产生的框架将用于绘制加拿大各地对气候变化和干旱/洪水脆弱地区的河流敏感性地图，并为土地使用规划制定对环境影响小的战略。考虑到本研究计划中考虑的环境设置的强烈梯度，我希望这些发现可以外推到世界各地的其他景观。