Future land cover and climate may drive decreases in snow wind-scour and transpiration, increasing streamflow at a Colorado, USA headwater catchment

Barnhart, T., Vukomanovic, J., Bourgeron, P., and Molotch, N. Future land cover and climate may drive decreases in snow wind-scour and transpiration, increasing streamflow at a Colorado, USA headwater catchment. Hydrological Processes, e14416. Available at https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.14416.

Como creek. Photo credit: W. Bowman

Abstract

Understanding how land cover change will impact water resources in snow-dominated regions is of critical importance as these locations produce disproportionate runoff relative to their land area. We coupled a land cover evolution model with a spatially explicit, physics-based, watershed process model to simulate land cover change and its impact on the water balance in a 5.0 km2 headwater catchment spanning the alpine-subalpine transition on the Colorado Front Range. We simulated two potential futures both with greater air temperature (+4 °C/century) and more precipitation (+15%/century, MP) or less precipitation (-15%/century, LP) from 2000-2100. Forest cover in the catchment increased from 72% in 2000 to 84% and 83% in 2050 and to 95% and 92% in 2100 for MP and LP, respectively. Surprisingly, increases in forest cover led to mean increases in annual streamflow production of 12 mm (6%) and 2 mm (1%) for MP and LP in 2050 with an annual control streamflow of 208 mm. In 2100, mean streamflow production increased by 91 mm (44%) and 61 mm (29%) for MP and LP. This result counters previous work as runoff production increased with forested area due to decreases in snow wind-scour and increases in drifting leeward of vegetation, highlighting the need to better understand the impacts of forest expansion on the spatial pattern of snow scour, deposition, and catchment effective precipitation. Identifying the hydrologic response of mountainous areas to climate warming induced land cover change is critically important due to the potential water resources impacts on downstream regions.