Assessment of land use change impact on streamflow and hydrological extremes : a case study of the Mun River Basin, Thailand | |
| Author | Singh, Manzari |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.WM-20-03 |
| Subject(s) | Flood forecasting--Thailand Streamflow--Thailand--Mun River Basin Hydrological forecasting--Thailand--Mun River Basin |
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineeing in Water Engineering and Management |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | Anthropogenic activities have caused a lot of disturbances in nature, and Thailand is not an exception. Mun river basin in Thailand is facing both the hydrological extremes; floods and droughts. In order to understand the factors contributing to this, this study tries to examine the historical and future land use of Mun river basin and quantify the impact of change in land use in river flows and hydrological extremes. Possible land use scenarios were created and future maps were simulated using landuse change model Dyna-CLUE. A hydrological model, HEC-HMS was used to quantify the impact of changes of land use on river flows. To find the impact on hydrological extremes, the hydrological indices of IHA were used. In order to simulate the changes in future land use of the Mun river basin from 2016-2050, three different scenarios were generated. They were: scenario 1 “Economic”, scenario 2 “Conservation” and scenario 3 “High urbanization”. All three scenarios show a gradual decrease in paddy field area but increase in field crops and perennial and orchards. All three scenarios also encompass for high agricultural growth as the total land occupancy in 2050 by agriculture would be around 30-35% of the total land cover. Scenario 3 shows the highest loss of forests with 7% of total land cover (around 5% decrease) and scenario 2 shows loss of paddy fields by 20% than the baseline period. The coverage of perennial and orchards double in all the three scenarios. For the hydrological extremes, IHA shows that there was more change in extreme low flow compared to high flows in all scenarios and time periods compared to the past flows. Overall, the streamflow reduces for scenario 1 and 2 by 8% and 13% respectively. While, the third scenario shows an increase of streamflow by 6%. |
| Year | 2020 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Engineering and Technology (SET) |
| Department | Department of Civil and Infrastucture Engineering (DCIE) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Water Engineering and Management (WM) |
| Chairperson(s) | Shrestha, Sangam; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Babel, Mukand Singh;Sunsaram, S. Mohana;Duc Hoang Nguyen; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | AIT Fellowship; |
| Degree | Thesis (M. Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2000 |