Impact of historical and future land use land cover on spatial-temporal variation of discharge and sediment load of Upper Tapi Basin, India

Trend detection of discharge and sediment load is vital to adopt suitable conservation measures as per the changes occurring. In the present study, trends of daily streamflow and sediment load for Upper Tapi Basin are analyzed using Mann-Kendall, modified Mann-Kendall, and innovative trend analysis and change points are found using Pettitt tests from 1985 to 2020 to determine time series' trend with the statistical significance. Land use land cover (LULC) for Upper Tapi Basin is prepared for three decades (1989–2020). Innovative trend analysis has shown non-monotonicity in the time series with a decreasing trend. The streamflow is found to be significantly decreasing in the basin. A decline in sediment load is observed in Burhanpur and Gopalkheda while there is an increasing trend in Yerli G.S. The rise in anthropogenic activities is the main reason behind the reduction in suspended sediment load (SSL) over the basin. The decadal analysis of LULC showed an increase in built-up area (18.3%), barren land (5–8%), waterbodies (1.2–1.9%) agricultural land (50–60.79%) and a decrease in vegetation (from 43 to 21%). The LULC for 2030 is predicted with Land Change Modeler (LCM) in IDRISI Terrset. The estimated LULC shows that the built-up area will expand as agricultural land decreases. The overall study indicates that anthropogenic activities will increase in the future. The findings of this study will aid in decision making for river basin water resource management, as well as understanding the influence of human-caused activities on flow and sediment load variance.