Assessing the influence of climate variability and land cover change on water resources in the Wami river catchment, Tanzania
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Date
2024-02-13
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
SPRINGER
Abstract
Understanding the trend, extent, and effect of climate variability and land cover change are globally important for monitor-
ing river catchments water resources. Due to the majority of river catchment from developing countries such as Tanzania
experiencing insufficient time series data, the long-term ERA5-Land (1960–2021) reanalysis was used to assess the influence
of climate variability and land cover change on water resource in the Wami river catchment. The Mann–Kendal–Sneyer test
revealed a change that reflects the effect of land cover change on runoff in 1992, hence the mean annual runoff, precipitation,
and actual evapotranspiration decreased by 19%, 9.7%, and 8.9%, respectively, while potential evapotranspiration increased
by 5% after the change. Budyko decomposition and climate elasticity methods illustrated that variability change caused a
notable contribution to the reduction of Wami River runoff. Hydrological sensitivity analysis revealed that variability of
climate is a primary factor that reduced runoff with a contribution of 69%, while land cover change is 31%, this illustrates
runoff in the Wami river catchment is more vulnerable to climate variability than land cover change by considering that
most of the catchment are classified as arid or semi-arid. Thus, our study emphasizes the importance embracing climate
adaptation strategies, particularly a nature-based solution (NbS), to ensure the sustainability of water resources within the
Wami river catchment.
Description
Journal of Environmental Earth Sciences
Keywords
Climate variability, Land cover change, Runoff, Water availability, Wami river catchment, Remote sensing
Citation
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-023-11383-3