A landscape hydrology approach to inform sustainable water resource management under a changing environment. A case study for the Kaleya River Catchment, Zambia

•An approach to detect controls on seasonal river flows is presented.•Seasonal rainfall characteristics impacting flows, not annual rainfall totals.•Main landscape stressors on flows were irrigated cropland and reservoir patterns.•Larger forest patches could help offset increasing rainfall intensity effects. Kaleya River Catchment in southern Zambia. The ability of a landscape hydrology approach to detect controls on water availability in a fragmented landscape to inform interventions under a changing environment was investigated. Simple and measurable climatic and landscape pattern attributes were analysed using change detection, trend analysis and backward variable elimination with Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) to identify controls on seasonal river flows and how landscape components could be enhanced to augment natural river flows. Landscape pattern showed increasing fragmentation, expansion of irrigated cropland and reservoirs and loss of forestland. Significant increasing trends (p