Data-driven Analysis of Potential Impacts of Land-use/cover Change on Water Resources in Coastal Watersheds: Perspectives from Non-stationarity and Nonlinearity
Water resource conditions are highly influenced by human activities. As one of the most important indicators that reflects the intensity of human activities, LUCC has drawn much attention in recent decades. Thus, it is necessary to understand the LUCC patterns in watersheds and identify their impacts on the local water resources. We also analyzed the impacts of the human activities on the streamflow regime as well as the regional climate changes. Furthermore, the nonlinear relationship between land use and water quality was identified in this study. The major findings of this study are as follows: (1) Spatial variation in land use was highly related to the driving factors, and population and local economic development may be the major factors influencing urbanization processes in the coastal watersheds. (2) Streamflow extremes are highly impacted by the human activities and climate variability, and the human activities may be the major factor controlling streamflow extremes at short time scales. (3) The coupled effects of climate variability and human activities were identified by analyzing the relationship between urbanization and climate patterns in the studied watersheds, and the patterns of precipitation and temperature may be modified in highly urbanized areas. (4) A nonlinear relationship between land use and water quality has been widely observed, especially in highly polluted watersheds
