Assessing impacts of climate variability and land use/land cover change on the water balance components in the Sahel using Earth observations and hydrological modelling

Senegal river (SRB), Niger river (NRB), and Lake Chad basins (LCB). We investigated the impacts of land use/land cover change (LULC) and climate variability on the water balance components from 1990 to 2020. We applied the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) coupled with remote sensing retrievals of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) and surface soil moisture (SSM). To separate the impacts of the two aforementioned factors, two numerical experiments were designed: (i) climate variability effects by applying frozen LULC while changing the climate; (ii) LULC change impacts by applying frozen climate while changing LULC. Overall, at the basin level, the results indicated that climate variability had the dominant role in increasing groundwater recharge, surface runoff, groundwater return flow and lateral flow in LCB and SRB. These increases triggered the recovery of lake area and higher water table in LCB and increased in SRB streamflow, while water scarcity increased in NRB. In contrast, the separate effect of LULC change, specifically natural vegetation expansion, increased actual ET and decreased the surface runoff, which could be a reason for lake area depletion in LCB and decreasing SRB and NRB streamflow. At the sub-basin level, LULC change, i.e. a gain in cropland and urban areas at the expense of forests in some sub-basins in NRB, led to a local increase in surface runoff. This implies a better redistribution of water in downstream and compensates the deficit in surface runoff caused by natural vegetation expansion in some other catchments. These changes, simultaneously with high intensity and long-duration precipitation, may increase the likelihood of inundation in some small catchments in the Niger river basin. These outcomes give useful hydrological insights into water and land management by emphasizing the crucial role of water recycling. [Display omitted] •Calibrate and validate SWAT successfully using remote sensing data in Senegal river, Niger river and Lake Chad basins.•Assess land use/cover and climate changes impacts on Sahelian water balance using numerical experiments and SWAT.•Climate variability was the major driver of rising water availability and water recycling in Senegal and Lake Chad basins..•WLand use/cover change was the dominant factor in decreasing surface runoff in Niger.•Water recycling may play an important role in water and land management..