Hydrology and Earth System Sciences www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net 1027-5606 1607-7938 12 1 2008 10.5194/hess-12-101-2008 http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/12/101/2008/ http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/12/101/2008/hess-12-101-2008.html http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/12/101/2008/hess-12-101-2008.pdf 101 110 2008-01-25 Hydrological responses of a watershed to historical land use evolution and future land use scenarios under climate change conditions R. Quilbé A. N. Rousseau alain.rousseau@ete.inrs.ca J.-S. Moquet S. Savary S. Ricard M. S. Garbouj Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique – Centre Eau, Terre et Environnement (INRS-ETE), Université du Québec, 490 rue de la Couronne, Québec (QC), Canada, G1K 9A9 Watershed runoff is closely related to land use but this influence is difficult to quantify. This study focused on the Chaudière River watershed (Québec, Canada) and had two objectives: (i) to quantify the influence of historical agricultural land use evolution on watershed runoff; and (ii) to assess the effect of future land use evolution scenarios under climate change conditions (CC). To achieve this, we used the integrated modeling system GIBSI. Past land use evolution was constructed using satellite images that were integrated into GIBSI. The general trend was an increase of agricultural land in the 80's, a slight decrease in the beginning of the 90's and a steady state over the last ten years. Simulations showed strong correlations between land use evolution and water discharge at the watershed outlet. For the prospective approach, we first assessed the effect of CC and then defined two opposite land use evolution scenarios for the horizon 2025 based on two different trends: agriculture intensification and sustainable development. 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