Effects of Urbanization and Climate Change on Peak Flows over the San Antonio River Basin, Texas
AbstractA thorough understanding of the peak flows under urbanization and climate change with the associated uncertainties is indispensable for mitigating the negative social, economic, and environmental impacts from flooding. In this paper, a case study was conducted by applying the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) to the San Antonio River basin (SARB) Texas. Historical and future land cover maps were assembled to represent the urbanization process. Future climate and its uncertainties were represented by a series of designed scenarios using the Change Factor (CF) method. The factors were calculated by comparing the model ensemble from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) with baseline historical climatology during two future periods (2020 49, period 1; 2070 99, period 2) It was found that with urban impervious areas increasing alone, annual peak flows may increase from 601 (period 1) to 885 m3 s 1 (period 2) With regard to climate change, annual peak flows d.