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Watershed Hydrology and Management Under Changing Climate, 2nd Edition
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Watershed Hydrology and Management Under Changing Climate, 2nd Edition

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 April 2026) | Viewed by 3576

Editors

Prof. Dr. Hongbo Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. School of Water and Environment, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710054, China
2. Key Laboratory of Eco-Hydrology and Water Security in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions of the Ministry of Water Resources, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710054, China
3. Key Laboratory of Subsurface Hydrology and Ecological Effect in Arid Region of Ministry of Education, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710054, China
Interests: watershed hydrology; water resources allocation; drought assessment; flood simulation; climate change; land-use and land-cover change; reservior regulation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Jie Yang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. School of Water and Environment, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710054, China
2. Key Laboratory of Eco-Hydrology and Water Security in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions of the Ministry of Water Resources, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710054, China
Interests: water-energy-food nexus; water resources allocation; water-carbon coupling; ecological restoration; sustainable resources utilization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last 20 years, global climate change and the underlying surface changes have worsened. The basin's hydrological process has shown some concerning traits, such as non-stationarity, spatial heterogeneity, and interactive complexity, especially when human activities are taken into account. These characteristics have led to responsive changes in the ecohydrological process, the interaction process of surface water and groundwater, the spatiotemporal evolution process of drought and flood events, and the harmony between humans and water in the basin. This will surely present major challenges to water-related hazard prevention, hydrological modeling and forecasting, and the sustainable management of water resources under a changing climate. To solve these problems and encourage both harmony between humans and water and the high-quality growth of watersheds, scientists need to learn more about the hydrological changes that are happening in watersheds as a result of climate change and identify with better adaptive ways to deal with and manage them.

This special Issue seeks contributions involving innovative methodologies or relevant case studies addressing cutting-edge challenges in watershed management, eco-hydrology, and climate adaptation. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

(1) Comprehensive responses of watershed hydrological processes to climate change and underlying surface changes;

(2) Novel methodology for watershed hydrological modeling and forecasting;

(3) New insights for watershed ecohydrological processes and environmental flow management;

(4) Efficient strategies for watershed drought and flood risk management;

(5) Watershed socio-hydrology and new approaches for improving harmony between humans and water;

(6) Adaptive watershed water resources management and digital watershed system construction;

(7) Integrated assessment and dynamic coupling mechanisms of watershed water–energy–food–ecology (WEFE) systems;

(8) Realization of ecological benefits and ecological product value of water and soil conservation in small watersheds.

Prof. Dr. Hongbo Zhang
Dr. Jie Yang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • climate change
  • hydrology modeling and forecasting
  • hydrological connectivity
  • groundwater–surface water inter-action
  • ecohydrology
  • socio-hydrology
  • digital watershed
  • environmental flow
  • drought and flood risk management
  • integrated water resources management

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Related Special Issue

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

34 pages, 66610 KB  
Article
Integrated Hydrological–Hydraulic Framework for Urban Flood Risk Management in Montería, Colombia: From 2D Modeling and Vulnerability Assessment to Structural, Non-Structural, and Emergency Intervention Measures
by Samuel Pinto Argel, Humberto Tavera Quiróz, Gabriel Narvaez-Campo, Fernando Campo Zambrano, Mauricio Rosso Pinto and Jorge Cardenas de la Ossa
Water 2026, 18(13), 1576; https://doi.org/10.3390/w18131576 (registering DOI) - 27 Jun 2026
Viewed by 235
Abstract
Tropical mid-size cities on alluvial floodplains face compounded flood challenges combining pluvial accumulation from intense convective storms, regulated river overflow, and aging drainage networks. This study presents an integrated framework for Monteria, Colombia (~450,000 inhabitants; Sinu River, Caribbean lowlands), within Colombian Decree 1807/2014 [...] Read more.
Tropical mid-size cities on alluvial floodplains face compounded flood challenges combining pluvial accumulation from intense convective storms, regulated river overflow, and aging drainage networks. This study presents an integrated framework for Monteria, Colombia (~450,000 inhabitants; Sinu River, Caribbean lowlands), within Colombian Decree 1807/2014 and structured in four phases. (1) Hazard: A Rain-on-Grid 2D HEC-RAS 6.6 model covering 4090 ha, calibrated against four gauged events, identifies three dominant pluvial mechanisms (poor hydraulic connectivity, limited evacuation capacity, downstream channel overflow), plus 17 critical fluvial erosion points affecting ~289 properties at 100-year return period. (2) Vulnerability: Depth-damage functions from 1465 household surveys yield 36.36% of 3015 assets in high risk and 57.77% in medium risk. (3) Measures: Scenario M2 (channel widening plus dikes, land-raising, retention lagoons) removes 80 ha of flooding while displacing 28 ha at COP 845 million pre-design cost. Non-structural measures include a Sustainable Urban Drainage Master Plan, IoT-based Early Warning System, minimum construction-elevation map, and land-management instruments. A Monte Carlo residual-risk model reduces baseline risk to 19.9% under full implementation. (4) Emergency: A February 2026 cold-front event was addressed with a 4300 m perimeter dike and six pump stations deployed jointly by the Regional Environmental Authority (CVS) and Municipal Administration. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Watershed Hydrology and Management Under Changing Climate, 2nd Edition)
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17 pages, 3943 KB  
Article
Watershed Water Supply Security Reliability Assessment and Risk Node Identification in Mountain Piedmont Transition Zones Under Extreme Drought Stress: A Case Study from the Feng River Basin
by Jiaojiao Lv, Yu Zhang, Yifan Wang, Zhihui Wang, Dongyong Sun, Huan Ma and Xuedi Zhang
Water 2026, 18(10), 1121; https://doi.org/10.3390/w18101121 - 7 May 2026
Viewed by 692
Abstract
During severe drought conditions, water supply risks tend to be concentrated at critical water intake nodes and vulnerable river segments, while the conventional total balance method is inadequate for depicting the spatial evolution of these risks. This study developed a node-based water supply [...] Read more.
During severe drought conditions, water supply risks tend to be concentrated at critical water intake nodes and vulnerable river segments, while the conventional total balance method is inadequate for depicting the spatial evolution of these risks. This study developed a node-based water supply security assessment framework for the Feng River Basin, a representative watershed in the piedmont transition zone. The framework coupled SWAT-simulated runoff with a supply–demand balance model and evaluated water supply reliability at both the node and basin scales. Two scenarios were compared: an artificial water system scenario and an artificial water system with an engineering-based water resource allocation scenario. Dry (P = 75%) and extremely dry (P = 95%) conditions were considered to examine the performance of artificial regulation under drought stress. The results showed that basin-scale water supply reliability remained relatively stable, ranging from 0.833 to 0.853 under different scenarios. However, the node-scale results revealed strong spatial heterogeneity. Nodes 1 and 3 maintained full or nearly full reliability, whereas Nodes 4, 6, and 7 showed relatively low reliability and higher water shortage risk. Under the P = 75% scenario, engineering-based water resource allocation increased basin-scale reliability from 0.848 to 0.853, indicating a slight improvement in supply–demand balance. In contrast, under the P = 95% scenario, reliability decreased from 0.839 to 0.833 after introducing water resource allocation, suggesting that transfer-based interventions may have limited effectiveness when natural inflow is severely reduced. In particular, Node 7 showed a marked decline in reliability under the allocation scenario, indicating that water supply risks may be redistributed and concentrated at specific intake nodes under extreme drought conditions. The scenario comparison further indicates that water diversion strategies may produce a dual effect of local improvement and global reconfiguration. Insufficient supply intensity may result in engineering interventions that cause downstream water reduction impacts, leading to a spatial redistribution and shifting of risks rather than their systemic eradication. This study seeks to transition the evaluation paradigm from “total safety” to “node safety,” establishing a scientific foundation for enhancing the emergency response system in critical areas of the basin. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Watershed Hydrology and Management Under Changing Climate, 2nd Edition)
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24 pages, 23206 KB  
Article
Identification and Spatiotemporal Evolution of Drought–Flood Abrupt Alternation Events in the Yellow River Basin Based on Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)
by Heng Xiao, Huiru Su, Wentao Cai, Xiuyu Zhang and Chen Lu
Water 2026, 18(9), 1053; https://doi.org/10.3390/w18091053 - 29 Apr 2026
Viewed by 543
Abstract
This study proposes a quantitative identification method for drought–flood abrupt alternation (DFAA) events in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) based on the daily standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) data from 1982 to 2021 and analyzes their spatiotemporal evolution characteristics. The results show that [...] Read more.
This study proposes a quantitative identification method for drought–flood abrupt alternation (DFAA) events in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) based on the daily standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) data from 1982 to 2021 and analyzes their spatiotemporal evolution characteristics. The results show that the proposed identification method has good applicability and agrees well with historical records. Grid-scale DFAA events showed an overall slowly increasing trend in occurrence frequency. The mean occurrence frequency, mean duration, and mean intensity were 0.67 events, 30.57 d, and 1.45, respectively. The mean occurrence frequency had a pattern of being higher in the middle and lower reaches and lower in the upper reaches, whereas the mean intensity had a pattern of being higher in the west than in the east and higher in the south than in the north. A total of 16 DFAA events were identified in the YRB, with a mean annual occurrence frequency of 0.4 events per year and an increasing trend across decades. The mean total duration of these events was 31.81 d, and the intensity ranged from 0.96 to 1.79. DFAA events were generally less frequent in the upper reaches and more frequent in the middle and lower reaches and the inland-drainage area. For the level-II water resource subregions, Hekouzhen–Longmen (Subregion IV), Sanmenxia–Huayuankou (Subregion VI), the area below Huayuankou (Subregion VII), and the inland-drainage area (Subregion VIII) had higher occurrence frequencies and larger fluctuations in duration. These findings could provide a scientific reference for flood control, drought relief, and disaster risk management in the YRB. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Watershed Hydrology and Management Under Changing Climate, 2nd Edition)
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21 pages, 3489 KB  
Article
A Novel Reservoir Ensemble Forecasting Method Based on Constrained Multi-Model Weight Optimization
by Yinuo Gao, Xu Yang and Shuai Zhou
Water 2026, 18(3), 327; https://doi.org/10.3390/w18030327 - 28 Jan 2026
Viewed by 540
Abstract
Accurate runoff forecasting is vital yet challenged by the increasing non-stationarity of hydrological systems, which often exceeds the capacity of traditional single models. Ensemble forecasting, as an effective approach, integrates multiple models’ information to enhance forecasting performance and assess uncertainty. However, existing methods [...] Read more.
Accurate runoff forecasting is vital yet challenged by the increasing non-stationarity of hydrological systems, which often exceeds the capacity of traditional single models. Ensemble forecasting, as an effective approach, integrates multiple models’ information to enhance forecasting performance and assess uncertainty. However, existing methods (such as Bayesian Model Averaging and BMA) still have limitations in dealing with complex hydrological scenarios, particularly in the construction and optimization of forecast intervals. This paper proposes a novel hydrological ensemble interval forecasting method based on constrained multi-model weight optimization (Constrained Multi-Model Weight Optimization, CMWO). CMWO utilizes a set of heterogeneous deterministic models to generate members, assigns dynamic optimization weight intervals to enhance flexibility, and employs a multi-objective framework to minimize interval width and errors subject to a ≥95% coverage constraint. Taking the Huangjinxia Reservoir in the upper reaches of the Hanjiang River as a case study, the CMWO method was systematically applied and evaluated for decadal-scale runoff forecasting and comprehensively compared with widely used BMA methods and individual models. The results show that CMWO significantly outperforms in improving point forecast accuracy (measured by RMSE, KGE, etc.) and interval forecast quality (evaluated by PICP, PIAW, CRPS, etc.), especially in generating narrower, more informative prediction intervals while ensuring high reliability. The CMWO method proposed in this study provides a competitive new tool for the effective management of forecasting uncertainty in complex hydrological systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Watershed Hydrology and Management Under Changing Climate, 2nd Edition)
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31 pages, 16955 KB  
Article
Uncertainty Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Change on Streamflow in the Iznik Lake Watershed, Türkiye
by Anıl Çalışkan Tezel, Adem Akpınar, Aslı Bor and Şebnem Elçi
Water 2026, 18(2), 187; https://doi.org/10.3390/w18020187 - 10 Jan 2026
Viewed by 1053
Abstract
Study region: This study focused on the Iznik Lake Watershed in northwestern Türkiye. Study focus: Climate change is increasingly affecting water resources worldwide, raising concerns about future hydrological sustainability. This study investigates the impacts of climate change on river streamflow in [...] Read more.
Study region: This study focused on the Iznik Lake Watershed in northwestern Türkiye. Study focus: Climate change is increasingly affecting water resources worldwide, raising concerns about future hydrological sustainability. This study investigates the impacts of climate change on river streamflow in the Iznik Lake Watershed, a critical freshwater resource in northwestern Türkiye. To capture possible future conditions, downscaled climate projections were integrated with the SWAT+ hydrological model. Recognizing the inherent uncertainties in climate models and model parameterization, the analysis examined the relative influence of climate realizations, emission scenarios, and hydrological parameters on streamflow outputs. By quantifying both the magnitude of climate-induced changes and the contribution of different sources of uncertainty, the study provides insights that can guide decision-makers in future management planning and be useful for forthcoming modeling efforts. New hydrological insights for the region: Projections indicate wetter winters and springs but drier summers, with an overall warming trend in the study area. Based on simulations driven by four representative grid points, the results at the Karadere station, which represents the main inflow of the watershed, indicate modest changes in mean annual streamflow, ranging from −7% to +56% in the near future and from +19% to +54% in the far future. Maximum flows (Qmax) exhibit notable increases, ranging from +0.9% to +47% in the near future and from +21% to +63% in the far future, indicating a tendency toward higher peak discharges under future climate conditions. Low-flow conditions, especially in summer, exhibit the greatest relative variability due to near-zero baseline discharges. Relative change analysis revealed considerable differences in Karadere and Findicak sub-catchments, reflecting heterogeneous hydrological responses even within the same basin. Uncertainty analysis, conducted using both an ANOVA-based approach and Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA), highlighted the dominant influence of climate projections and potential evapotranspiration calculation methods, while land use change contributed negligibly to overall uncertainty. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Watershed Hydrology and Management Under Changing Climate, 2nd Edition)
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