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Modelling the water balance with SWAT as part of the land use impact evaluation in a life cycle study of CO 2 emission reduction scenarios
Author(s) -
Heuvelmans Griet,
GarciaQujano Juan F.,
Muys Bart,
Feyen Jan,
Coppin Pol
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
hydrological processes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.222
H-Index - 161
eISSN - 1099-1085
pISSN - 0885-6087
DOI - 10.1002/hyp.5620
Subject(s) - environmental science , evapotranspiration , water balance , surface runoff , land use , land use, land use change and forestry , groundwater recharge , life cycle assessment , soil and water assessment tool , impact assessment , swat model , hydrology (agriculture) , water use , water resource management , environmental resource management , groundwater , civil engineering , streamflow , engineering , geography , drainage basin , aquifer , economics , ecology , geotechnical engineering , macroeconomics , cartography , public administration , production (economics) , political science , biology
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an ISO standardized method designed to evaluate the impact of human activities on the environment using objective and measurable indicators. To be effective an LCA analysis should be cost‐efficient in data gathering and the methods used for calculating the impact categories ought to be universally applicable. The land use impact category of an LCA deals with impacts of land occupation and land use change on water balance, soil and vegetation. This paper proposes to use a modelling approach to generate indicators for the land use impact of CO 2 emission reduction projects on the ecosystem water balance. The rate variables of the water balance selected to describe the land use impacts are evapotranspiration, surface runoff, discharge, groundwater recharge and soil loss through water erosion. They are simulated making use of the SWAT model. The paper describes the application of the proposed methodology for two locations with different site characteristics and land use patterns. Special attention was paid to aspects of data availability and reliability. Comparison of the simulation results with literature data revealed that SWAT provides reasonable results, which can be used for assessing the land use impact in LCA. The sensitivity analysis indicated low dependency of the model output to minor and moderate changes in model input, with the exception of changes in precipitation and leaf area index (LAI). The study also indicated that the land use library in SWAT needs further development to become universally applicable for LCA purposes. A scenario analysis allowed us to predict the impact of land occupation on the hydrology and erosion of both study areas. Finally, the LCA indicators giving the impact on the water balance per functional unit were calculated by expressing the SWAT outputs per kilogram of CO 2 emission reduction. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.