Impact of Land Use Change on the Predicted Runoff of the Geul Catchment
The main goal of the letter Water en Bodem sturend is improving the spatial planning of the Netherlands. Measures are suggested to be more resilient to droughts and floods. Creating more space for holding, storing, and draining the water in the spatial planning, land use, and land management of the Netherlands improves flood resilience. Changing the land use will increase the water storage and retention times. Deltares investigated increasing water storage by changing the land use in a watersystem analysis of Limburg. The exact impact of the land use change proved uncertain. The research was performed with a semi-distributed HBV model, maintained by the Waterboard of Limburg. Angela Klein modelled the Geul in wflow_sbm. Both hydrological models are used by the Waterboard of Limburg, but are not yet compared. The waterboard is interested in the difference between the semi-distributed HBV model and the distributed wflow_sbm model.
In this thesis, the semi-distributed HBV and distributed wflow_sbm models are compared and the most suited hydrological model for the Geul is selected. The impact of land use change on the predicted discharge is evaluated with the selected model. The hydrological models are connected to a hydrodynamic D-HYDRO model of the Geul in Limburg, build by RoyalHaskoningDHV (RHDHV).
The research consists of three parts:
- Investigating the study area.
Based on a literature study and a field trip, the characteristics of the Geul catchment are investigated. - Comparing HBV and wflow_sbm.
The comparison consists of two steps. The first step is adding the HBV and wflow_sbm hydrological models to the eWaterCycle platform and couple them to the D-HYDRO model. This results in a workflow, which can be used for other catchments. The second step is quantitatively and qualitatively comparing the hydrological models. The comparison results in a model that is the most suited for the Geul catchment. A workflow is also made for choosing a hydrological model for the Geul. - Analyzing the impact of land use change.
The analysis will be done with different, yet to be determined, scenarios of land use change. This results in possibilities to reduce floods in the Geul catchment
For more information, please contact: d.w.idsinga@student.tudelft.nl