A Scenario-Based Approach for Assessing the Hydrological Impacts of Land Use and Climate Change in the Marboreh Watershed, Iran

In separate analyses of the impacts of land use change and climate change, a scenario-based approach using remote sensing and hydro-climatological data was developed to assess changes in hydrological indices. The data comprised three Landsat TM images (1988, 1998, 2008) and meteorological and hydrological data (1983–2012) for the Aligudarz and Doroud stations in the Marboreh watershed, Iran. The QUAC module and supervised classification maximum likelihood (ML) algorithm in ENVI 5.1 were used for remote sensing, the SWAT model for hydrological modelling and the Mann-Kendall and t test methods for statistical analysis. To create scenarios, the study period was divided into three decades (1983–1992, 1993–2002, 2003–2012) with clearly different land use/land cover (LULC). After hydrological modelling, 10 hydrological indices related to high and low flow indices (HDI and LDI) were analysed for seven scenarios developed by combining pre-defined climate periods and LULC maps. The major changes in land use were degradation of natural rangeland (− 18.49%) and increasing raid-fed farm area (+ 16.70%) and residential area (+ 0.80%). The Mann-Kendall test results showed a statistically significant ( p