Regionalization of the SWAT+ model for projecting climate change impacts on sediment yield: An application in the Nile basin

Albert Nkwasa; Celray James Chawanda; Ann van Griensven

doi:10.1016/j.ejrh.2022.101152

Regionalization of the SWAT+ model for projecting climate change impacts on sediment yield: An application in the Nile basin

J Hydrol Reg Stud. 2022 Aug:42:101152. doi: 10.1016/j.ejrh.2022.101152.

Authors

Albert Nkwasa¹, Celray James Chawanda¹, Ann van Griensven^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), 1050 Brussel, Belgium.
² Water Science & Engineering Department, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, 2611 AX Delft, the Netherlands.

Abstract

Study region: Nile basin.

Study focus: Several studies have shown a relationship between climate change and changes in sediment yield. However, there are limited modeling applications that study this relationship at regional scales mainly due to data availability and computational cost. This study proposes a methodological framework using the SWAT+ model to predict and project sediment yield at a regional scale in data-scarce regions using global datasets. We implement a framework that (a) incorporates topographic factors from high/medium resolution DEMs (b) incorporates crop phenology data (c) introduces an areal threshold to linearize sediment yield in large model units and (d) apply a hydrological mass balance calibration. We test this methodology in the Nile Basin using a model application with (revised) and without (default) the framework under historical and future climate projections.

New hydrological insights for the region: Results show improved sediment yield estimates in the revised model, both in absolute values and spatial distribution when compared to measured and reported estimates. The contemporary long term (1989 - 2019) annual mean sediment yield in the revised model was 1.79 t ha^-1 yr^-1 and projected to increase by 61 % (44 % more than the default estimates) in the future period (2071 - 2100), with the greatest sediment yield increase in the eastern part of the basin. Thus, the proposed framework improves and influences modeled and predicted sediment yield respectively.

Keywords: Climate change; Nile basin; Regional modeling; SWAT+; Sediment yield; Soil erosion.