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: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=751288
• 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.

气候变化预计将影响水流的大部分方面。这将影响水资源管理的所有部门，例如水分配和安全以及减少洪水/干旱风险。如果没有时间和成本密集型的​​数据收集和建模，就很难预测流域的水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特定流域（尤其是地下）中存在哪些储水室以及在降雨或融雪丰富和短缺时它们如何对水流做出贡献的能力有限。流域内土地用途的变化（例如农业）也可能会改变流域储存水和产生水流的方式，也称为流域水文功能（CHF）。为了有效地预测气候变化导致流域径流的变化，水文学领域需要一个框架，该框架考虑容易获得的信息来描述CHF，以及它随不同程度的土地利用变化而变化的可能性。这样的框架可以制定科学战略，在气候变化的情况下管理水资源、为土地使用决策提供信息并确定优先保护的集水区。我增进了有关 CHF 的科学知识，并开发了新的技术和指标来描述世界各地不同流域的 CHF，具有重要的科学和管理意义。然而，我和其他人之前在这方面的研究仅在某些类型的环境设置中进行，导致无法开发出广泛适用的 CHF 框架。在接下来的五年中，我的目标是评估覆盖加拿大广泛环境环境的大量流域的水文功能。在此过程中，我将： 1) 确定最能决定 CHF 的因素； 2）开发能够表征CHF的新科学方程； 3) 确定土地利用变化对CHF的影响；最终 4) 开发第一个基于过程的通用框架，允许对加拿大各地研究不足的流域的水文功能进行表征。为了实现这些目标，我们将利用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。计划采用公平和包容性的招聘和指导做法来培训 8 名 HQP（2 名博士、3 名硕士、3 名本科生）。由此产生的框架将用于绘制加拿大各地水流对气候变化和干旱/洪水脆弱地区的敏感性地图，并制定土地利用规划的环境低影响战略。考虑到本研究计划中考虑的环境设置的强烈梯度，我希望研究结果可以外推到世界各地的其他景观。