Understanding the effects of land use/land cover and climate changes in the Lower Athabasca River sub-basin, Alberta: An integrated modelling approach

阿尔伯塔东北部的下阿萨巴斯卡次盆地包含阿萨巴斯卡油砂区的大部分。油砂作业和环境变化对地下水和地表水资源的长期可靠性产生了担忧。该次盆地的特点是广阔的湿地面积，低梯度，和比弗坝的渠化流沿着与工业发展和最近的火灾在麦克默里堡周围的北方森林，大大改变了景观之间的复杂关系。了解土地利用/土地覆盖（LULC）和气候变化对水资源的影响是至关重要的，但到目前为止，传统的建模方法已经混淆。为了解决这个问题，提出了一个独特的集成建模系统，处理复杂的景观水平的相互作用的实现。它采用了物理为基础的，空间分布的水文模型MIKE SHE/MIKE 11与LULC细胞自动机（CA）模型，已被广泛测试的手肘河流域在南部阿尔伯塔。本项目的目标是测试如何以及是否可以成功地应用为手肘河流域开发的综合建模方法来描述下阿萨巴斯卡河子流域的关键水文过程及其与LULC和气候变化的联系。本研究旨在回答以下问题：（i）什么是最好的CA设计，以代表空间异质性和复杂的景观相互作用，发生在不同尺度的子流域？(ii)变化的关键驱动因素是什么，以及捕捉该区域土地利用变化动态所需的过渡规则是什么？(iii)根据历史、当前和预计的用水情况，油砂作业对水资源的影响是什么？(iv)未来几十年土地利用/土地利用变化和气候变化的情景如何影响这种影响。使用CA模型捕捉历史和预测的LULC动态结合MIKE SHE/MIKE 11是独一无二的，可以模拟各种情景，以促进决策有关的水资源管理问题，这可以应用于加拿大其他流域。

The Lower Athabasca sub-basin in northeast Alberta contains a large portion of the Athabasca oil sands area. Oil sands operations and environmental changes create concerns for the long-term reliability of groundwater and surface water resources. The sub-basin is characterized by complex relationships between expansive wetland areas, low gradients, and beaver dam effects on channelized flow along with industrial development and the recent fire in the boreal forest surrounding Fort McMurray that considerably transformed the landscape. Understanding the impact of land use/land-cover (LULC) and climate change on water resources over time is critical, but has been confounded so far by traditional modeling approaches. To resolve this problem, the implementation of a unique integrated modeling system that deals with complex landscape level interactions is proposed. It incorporates the physically based, spatially distributed hydrological model MIKE SHE/MIKE 11 with a LULC cellular automata (CA) model that has been extensively tested on the Elbow River watershed in southern Alberta. The goal of this project is to test how, and if, the integrated modeling approach developed for the Elbow River watershed can be successfully applied to characterize the key hydrological processes in the Lower Athabasca River sub-basin and their linkages with LULC and climate change.This research aims to answer the following questions: (i) what is the best CA design to represent the spatial heterogeneity and complex landscape interactions that occur at different scales in the sub-basin? (ii) what are the key driving factors of change and the transition rules required to capture the LULC dynamics of the region? (iii) what is the impact of oil sands operations on water resources according to historical, current and projected use of water? (iv) how can such impact be influenced by scenarios of LULC and climate change over the next decades. The use of a CA model to capture historical and projected LULC dynamics in combination with MIKE SHE/MIKE 11 is unique and allows for the simulation of a variety of scenarios to facilitate decision-making about a wide range of water resource management issues, which can be applied in other watersheds across Canada.