Impact of land use change on hydrological systems: A review of current modeling approaches

Abstract Hydrologic modeling plays a very important role in assessing the seasonal water availability, which is necessary to take decisions in water resources management. Both climate and land use and land cover change have great influence on the hydrological response of a watershed. The main aim of this study is to provide a detailed review of studies which have been carried out to analyze the hydrological impacts of land use change, and also to evaluate different scenario modeling approaches. In addition, a brief description of basic hydrologic models which are used to simulate the stream flow is provided. This review paper tried to explain the importance of model comparison and performance evaluation in modeling studies. The following conclusions may be drawn from this review: (1) it is necessary to model the possible impacts of land use change and climate change in order to proceed with effective water resources management, (2) it is important to analyze the variation in hydrological response in catchments with different land use characteristics and climatic conditions and also under climate scenarios, and (3) integration of different models with hydrologic models can be considered as an efficient method to forecast future trends in hydrological response.