ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Quantitative Contribution of Climate Change
and Land Use Change to Runoff in Tarbela
Catchment, Pakistan
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1
Department of Civil Engineering, University College of Engineering and Technology, Bahauddin Zakariya University,
Multan, Pakistan
2
State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University,
Beijing, China
3
NICE, SCEE, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
4
Department of Agricultural Engineering, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan
Submission date: 2019-07-06
Final revision date: 2019-09-05
Acceptance date: 2019-09-08
Online publication date: 2020-03-27
Publication date: 2020-05-12
Corresponding author
Muhammad Shahid
Department of Hydraulic Engineering,, State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2020;29(5):3295-3304
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ABSTRACT
Estimating the quantitate contribution of climate and land use change is necessary for planning
water resources. Tarbela catchment in Pakistan was selected for this study. The Mann Kendall and Pettit
test has been used for trend analysis of hydro climatic variables. Original climate elasticity method
and improved empirical model of precipitation have been used. The results of trend analysis showed
that precipitation and runoff trends decreased and potential evaporation trends increased. The annual
rainfall and runoff presented a change point around the years 1999 and 1994 respectively. According
to change point analysis, the runoff series was divided into two parts. The period before change point
has been regarded as the pre-change period and the period after change point has been regarded as the
post change period. According to the original climate elasticity method, the relative contribution of
climate change and land use change has been computed as 39.3% and 60.7% respectively. Similarly the
improved empirical model of precipitation showed relative contributions of climate change as 41.7% and
the same for land use change as 58.3%. To validate the land use change contribution we prepared land
use maps. It can be concluded that land use and climate change are responsible for runoff change in
Tarbela catchment, and both methods performed well and results are in agreement.