Flood severity along the Usumacinta River, Mexico: Identifying the anthropogenic signature of tropical forest conversion

IF 3.1 Q2 GEOSCIENCES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY Journal of Hydrology X Pub Date : 2021-01-01 DOI:10.1016/j.hydroa.2020.100072
Alexander J Horton , Anja Nygren , Miguel A Diaz-Perera , Matti Kummu
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Abstract

Anthropogenic activities are altering flood frequency-magnitude distributions along many of the world’s large rivers. Yet isolating the impact of any single factor amongst the multitudes of competing anthropogenic drivers is a persistent challenge. The Usumacinta River in southeastern Mexico provides an opportunity to study the anthropogenic driver of tropical forest conversion in isolation, as the long meteorological and discharge records capture the river’s response to large-scale agricultural expansion without interference from development activities such as dams or channel modifications. We analyse continuous daily time series of precipitation, temperature, and discharge to identify long-term trends, and employ a novel approach to disentangle the signal of deforestation by normalising daily discharges by 90-day mean precipitation volumes from the contributing area in order to account for climatic variability. We also identify an anthropogenic signature of tropical forest conversion at the intra-annual scale, reproduce this signal using a distributed hydrological model (VMOD), and demonstrate that the continued conversion of tropical forest to agricultural land use will further exacerbate large-scale flooding. We find statistically significant increasing trends in annual minimum, mean, and maximum discharges that are not evident in either precipitation or temperature records, with mean monthly discharges increasing between 7% and 75% in the past decades. Model results demonstrate that forest cover loss is responsible for raising the 10-year return peak discharge by 25%, while the total conversion of forest to agricultural use would result in an additional 18% rise. These findings highlight the need for an integrated basin-wide approach to land management that considers the impacts of agricultural expansion on increased flood prevalence, and the economic and social costs involved.

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墨西哥Usumacinta河沿岸的洪水严重程度:确定热带森林转换的人为特征
人类活动正在改变世界上许多大河的洪水频率和震级分布。然而,在众多相互竞争的人为驱动因素中隔离任何单一因素的影响是一个持续的挑战。墨西哥东南部的Usumacinta河提供了一个单独研究热带森林转换的人为驱动因素的机会,因为长期的气象和流量记录记录记录了该河对大规模农业扩张的反应,而不受大坝或河道改造等开发活动的干扰。我们分析了降水、温度和流量的连续日时间序列,以确定长期趋势,并采用了一种新的方法,通过将贡献地区的日流量标准化90天平均降水量,来理清森林砍伐的信号,以考虑气候变化。我们还确定了热带森林年内转换的人为特征,使用分布式水文模型(VMOD)再现了这一信号,并证明热带森林向农业用地的持续转换将进一步加剧大规模洪水。我们发现,年最小、平均和最大流量在统计上有显著的增长趋势,这在降水或温度记录中都不明显,在过去几十年中,月平均流量增长了7%至75%。模型结果表明,森林覆盖损失导致10年一遇洪峰流量增加25%,而森林向农业用途的总转换将导致额外增加18%。这些发现突出表明,需要采取全流域的综合土地管理方法,考虑农业扩张对洪水流行率上升的影响,以及所涉及的经济和社会成本。
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来源期刊
Journal of Hydrology X
Journal of Hydrology X Environmental Science-Water Science and Technology
CiteScore
7.00
自引率
2.50%
发文量
20
审稿时长
25 weeks
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