Analysis of climate trend and effect of land use land cover change on Harangi streamflow, South India: a case study

Land use land cover (LULC) and climate change are considered to be driving factors contributing to the alteration of the hydrological regime. Therefore, an attempt has been made to study climate trend and the effect of LULC on streamflow in a basin covered predominantly by forest. The Harangi river basin is one of such basins located in the western ghats of South India. The LULC trend was carried out by considering temporal multispectral data for the years 1990, 2002 and 2008 obtained from Landsat-5TM and IRS 1C (Indian Remote Sensing Satellites). Climate parameters such as rainfall and temperatures were considered for the trend analysis in this study. The rainfall trend was studied using Man-Kendall and Sen’s slope method to understand the spatio-temporal variability. Rainfall shows the decrease trend at Suntikoppa rain gauge station in January and June months. Harangi and Madapura rain gauge stations also show a decrease of rainfall trend for only January month. Temperature trend show increase in maximum temperature for the month of April, May and November whereas increase in minimum temperature was observed in the month of November and December. Spatial extent of LULC found that 52.4% (220.014 km²) of the study area was covered with forest in 1990 which has considerably decreased to 43.9% (184.53 km²) in 2008. There was a rise in total area of plantation crops from 106.27 km² (25.32%) to 138.20 km² (32.9%) during this period. Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to study the effect of LULC on streamflow. SWAT model was calibrated and validated using observed daily streamflow data. The coefficient of correlation (r ²) was found to be 0.87 and 0.86 for calibration and validation, respectively. The results found the annual streamflow to increase by 0.77% from 1990 to 2008 whereas the mean monthly streamflow has increased by 9.46% during this period. This was mainly due to the reduction in forest area observed in LULC maps.