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

了解阿尔伯塔省阿萨巴斯卡河下游子流域土地利用/土地覆盖和气候变化的影响：综合建模方法

• 批准号: 499180-2016
• 负责人: Marceau, Danielle
• 金额: $ 1.82万
• 依托单位: University of Calgary
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Engage Grants Program
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=607235
• 关键词: Understanding; effects; land; use; cover

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.

艾伯塔省东北部的下阿萨巴斯卡次盆地包含阿萨巴斯卡油砂区的很大一部分。油砂作业和环境变化引起了对地下水和地表水资源长期可靠性的担忧。该次流域的特点是广阔的湿地面积、低梯度、海狸坝对渠道化水流的影响、工业发展以及麦克默里堡周围北方森林最近发生的火灾之间的复杂关系，极大地改变了景观。了解土地利用/土地覆盖 (LULC) 和气候变化对水资源随时间的影响至关重要，但迄今为止，传统的建模方法一直令人困惑。为了解决这个问题，提出了处理复杂景观层面交互的独特集成建模系统的实现。它结合了基于物理的空间分布水文模型 MIKE SHE/MIKE 11 和 LULC 元胞自动机 (CA) 模型，该模型已在艾伯塔省南部的 Elbow River 流域进行了广泛测试。该项目的目标是测试如何以及是否可以成功应用为肘河流域开发的综合建模方法来描述阿萨巴斯卡河下游次流域的关键水文过程及其与土地利用和土地利用和气候变化的联系。本研究旨在回答以下问题：（i）什么是代表子流域不同尺度上发生的空间异质性和复杂景观相互作用的最佳CA设计？ (ii) 变化的关键驱动因素是什么以及捕捉该地区土地利用和土地利用动态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，油砂作业对水资源有何影响？ (iv) 未来几十年土地利用和土地利用和气候变化情景如何影响这种影响。使用 CA 模型结合 MIKE SHE/MIKE 11 来捕获历史和预测的 LULC 动态是独一无二的，并且允许模拟各种场景，以促进有关各种水资源管理问题的决策，这可以适用于加拿大其他流域。