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Evaluating hydrological response of future land cover change scenarios in the San Pedro River (U.S./Mexico) with the automated geospatial watershed assessment (AGWA) tool

Informally Refereed

Abstract

Long-term land-use and land cover change and their associated impacts pose critical challenges to sustaining vital hydrological ecosystem services for future generations. In this study, a methodology was developed to characterize potential hydrologic impacts from future urban growth through time. Future growth is represented by housing density maps generated in decadal intervals from 2010 to 2100, produced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Integrated Climate and Land-Use Scenarios (ICLUS) database. ICLUS developed future housing density maps by adapting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) social, economic, and demographic storylines to the conterminous United States. To characterize hydrologic impacts from future growth, the housing density maps were reclassified to National Land Cover Database 2006 land cover classes and used to parameterize the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) using the Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment (AGWA) modeling system.

Parent Publication

Citation

Kepner, William G.; Burns, I. Shea; Goodrich, David C.; Guertin, D. Phillip; Sidman, Gabriel S.; Levick, Lainie R.; Yee, Wison W.S.; Scianni, Melissa M.A.; Meek, Clifton S.; Vollmer, Jared B. 2016. Evaluating hydrological response of future land cover change scenarios in the San Pedro River (U.S./Mexico) with the automated geospatial watershed assessment (AGWA) tool. In: Stringer, Christina E.; Krauss, Ken W.; Latimer, James S., eds. 2016. Headwaters to estuaries: advances in watershed science and management -Proceedings of the Fifth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds. March 2-5, 2015, North Charleston, South Carolina. e-General Technical  Report  SRS-211. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Southern Research Station. 10 p.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/50890