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Effects of Urbanization and Climate Change on Stream Health in North‐Central Texas
Author(s) -
Jeong Jaehak,
Kannan Narayanan,
Arnold Jeffery G.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of environmental quality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.888
H-Index - 171
eISSN - 1537-2537
pISSN - 0047-2425
DOI - 10.2134/jeq2011.0345
Subject(s) - environmental science , watershed , urbanization , soil and water assessment tool , climate change , hydrology (agriculture) , riparian zone , precipitation , urban stream , stream flow , streamflow , geography , water quality , drainage basin , ecology , meteorology , geology , cartography , geotechnical engineering , machine learning , habitat , computer science , biology
Estimation of stream health involves the analysis of changes in aquatic species, riparian vegetation, microinvertebrates, and channel degradation due to hydrologic changes occurring from anthropogenic activities. In this study, we quantified stream health changes arising from urbanization and climate change using a combination of the widely accepted Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA) and Dundee Hydrologic Regime Assessment Method (DHRAM) on a rapidly urbanized watershed in the Dallas‐Fort Worth metropolitan area in Texas. Historical flow data were split into pre‐alteration and post‐alteration periods. The influence of climate change on stream health was analyzed by dividing the precipitation data into three groups of dry, average, and wet conditions based on recorded annual precipitation. Hydrologic indicators were evaluated for all three of the climate scenarios to estimate the stream health changes brought about by climate change. The effect of urbanization on stream health was analyzed for a specific subwatershed where urbanization occurred dramatically but no stream flow data were available using the widely used watershed‐scale Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. The results of this study identify negative impacts to stream health with increasing urbanization and indicate that dry weather has more impact on stream health than wet weather. The IHA‐DHRAM approach and SWAT model prove to be useful tools to estimate stream health at the watershed scale.