Assessment of the Impacts of Global Climate Change and Regional Water Projects on Streamflow Characteristics in the Geum River Basin in Korea
1
Columbia Water Center, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA
2
Department of Water Resources Research Division, Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT), Goyang 10223, Korea
3
Department of Safety and Environment Research, Seoul Institute, Seoul 137-071, Korea
4
Department of Civil Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul 139-743, Korea
5
Department of Civil Engineering, Inha University, Incheon 402-751, Korea
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Ashantha Goonetilleke
Water 2016, 8(3), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/w8030091
Received: 21 December 2015 / Revised: 2 March 2016 / Accepted: 3 March 2016 / Published: 8 March 2016
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Resources Management: Innovation and Challenges in a Changing World)
The impacts of two factors on future regional-scale runoff were assessed: the external factor of climate change and the internal factor of a recently completed large-scale water resources project. A rainfall-runoff model was built (using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool, SWAT) for the Geum River, where three weirs were recently constructed along the main stream. RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways) climate change scenarios from the HadGEM3-RA RCM model were used to generate future climate scenarios, and daily runoff series were constructed based on the SWAT model. The indicators of the hydrologic alteration (IHA) program was used to carry out a quantitative assessment on the variability of runoff during two future periods (2011–2050, 2051–2100) compared to a reference period (1981–2006). Analyses of changes in the runoff characteristics of the lower Geum River showed that climate change is likely to lead to an increase of the future runoff ratio and that weirs contributed to an increase in the minimum discharge and a decrease in the maximum discharge. The influence of the weirs on the runoff characteristics of the Geum River basin was projected to be greater than that of climate change.
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Keywords:
climate change; water projects; streamflow; water resources
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MDPI and ACS Style
Kim, S.; Noh, H.; Jung, J.; Jun, H.; Kim, H.S. Assessment of the Impacts of Global Climate Change and Regional Water Projects on Streamflow Characteristics in the Geum River Basin in Korea. Water 2016, 8, 91.
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