Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Groundwater Recharge for Different Soil Types-Guelph Region in Grand River Basin, Canada

Authors
H. Motiee 1
E. McBean 2
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Water Engineering, Water and Environment Faculty, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
2 Professor of Water Resources, School of Engineering, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada
Abstract
Background: Global warming and climate change are widely indicated as important phenomena in the 21st century that cause serious impacts on the global water resources. Changes in temperature, precipitation and evaporation are occurring in regions throughout the world, resulting in changes including, runoff, streamflow and groundwater regimes, reduced water quantity and quality.
Materials and Methods: Relying upon thirty years of base data (1965–1994), three global circulation models (GCM), namely GISS, GFDM and CCC, are utilized to assess impact of climate change to groundwater recharge rates between years 2010 to 2050 for the Guelph region of the Grand River Basin in Canada. The resulting groundwater recharge rates for alternative soil layers are used to assess water balance conditions, and ultimately, the percolation rate to the groundwater using the Visual-HELP model.
Results: While the climate change impact assessment indicates that evaporation will increase and percolation will decrease during summer, increased percolation is indicated in winter due to additional freeze/thaw dimensions of climate change. The net effect is that the impact of climate change, based upon use of GCM models, is expected to increase groundwater recharge rate by 10% on average (7% for CCC, 10.6% for GISS and 12% for GFDM) in future.
Discussion and Conclusions: According to the results of this research in the Guelph region, the monthly average percolation rate is higher with climate change; (i) the percolation rate is increased during winter due to freeze/thaw effects, while (ii) it is decreased during summer due to higher evaporation rate.
Keywords
Climate Change
GCM models
Grand River Basin
Groundwater
Guelph
Visual-HELP
  1. IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of working group II to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge university press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2014; p. 688.

  2. Zierl B, Bugmann H. Global change impacts on hydrological processes in Alpine catchments. Wat Res Res. 2005; 41(2): 1-13.

  3. Penner JE, Lister D, Griggs DJ, Dokken DJM, Farland M. IPCC report about aviation and global atmosphere. ((Eds.), Cambridge university press, UK, 2014; p. 373.

  4. UNFCCC, Climate change: impact, vulnerabilities and adaptation in developing countries, United Nations framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) press, 2010; p. 68.

  5. Goodarzi E, Dastorani M, Massah Bavani A, Talebi A. Evaluation of the Change-factor and LARS-WG methods of downscaling for simulation of climatic variables in the future (Case study: Herat Azam Watershed, Yazd - Iran), J Ecop. 2015; 3 (1): 833-846.

  6. Feizi V, Mollashahi M, Frajzadeh M, Azizi G.  Spatial and Temporal trend analysis of temperature and precipitation in Iran. J Ecop. 2014; 2 (4): 727-742.

  7. McBean E, Motiee H, Assessment of impact of climate change on water resources: a long term analysis of the Great Lakes of North America, J. Hydrol. Earth Syst Sci. 2008; (12): 239-255.

  8. Maathuis H, Thorleifson LH. Potential impact of climate change on Prairie groundwater supplies: Review of current knowledge. Saskatchewan Research Council, Publication No. 11304-2E00, 2000; p. 93.

  9. Hansen J, Ruedy R, Glascoe J, Sato M. 19: GISS analysis of surface temperature change.  J. Geo, Res., 1999; (104): 30997-31022.

  10.  Manabe S, Stouffer RJ. Study of abrupt climate change by a coupled ocean-atmosphere model, Quarternary Science Reviews, 2001; (19): 285-299.

  11.  Boer GJ, Lambert SJ. Multi-modeldecadalpotentialpredictabilityofprecipitationandtemperature, Geophys Res Lett. 2008; 35: L05706.

  12.  Hengeveld HG. Projections for Canada’s climate future: a discussion of recent simulations with the Canadian global climate model, Environment Canada, 2000; p. 27.

  13.  Mortsch L, Allen M, Klaassen J. Development of climate change scenarios for impact and adaptation studies in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Basin, International Joint Communication Report Environment Canada;  2005.

  14.  Kulshreshtha S, Wheaton E. Climate change adaptation and food production in Canada: Some research challenges. WIT Trans Ecol Environ. 2013; 170: 101-112.

  15.  Smith JV, Mc Bean E. The impact of climate change on surface water resources, Chapter in The Impact of Climate Change on Water in the Grand River Basin, Ontario, University of Waterloo. Waterloo, Ontario 1993; 25-52.

  16.  Jyrkama MI, Sykes JF. The impact of climate change on spatially varying groundwater recharge in the Grand river watershed (Ontario), J Hydrol. 2007; 338: 237-250.

  17.  Croley TE, Luukkonen CL. Potential effects of climate change on ground water in Lansing, Michigan. J Am Water Resour As. 2003; 39 (1): 149–163.

  18.  Allen DM, Mackie DC, Wei M. Groundwater and climate change: a sensitivity analysis for the Grand Forks aquifer, southern British Columbia, Canada. Hydrogeol J. 2004; 12: 270-290.

  19.  Dragoni W, Sukhija BS, Climate Change and Groundwater, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 2008; 288: p. 1-12.

  20.  Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA), Low water response - areas of concern - Mill Creek., http://www.grandriver.ca/LowWater/mill.cfm, 2002.

  21.  Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA), state of the watershed report: Background Report on the Health of the Grand River Watershed 1996-97. Cambridge, Ontario. 1998; p. 143.

  22.  Wood AW, Leung LR, Sridhar V, Lettenmaier DP.: Hydrologic implications of dynamical and statistical approaches to downscaling climate model outputs, Climatic Change, 2004; 62: 189-216.

  23.  Xu Z, Yang ZL. An Improved Dynamical Downscaling Method with GCM Bias Corrections and Its Validation with 30 Years of Climate Simulations. J Climate. 2012; 25: 6271-6286.

  24.  Diaz-Nieto J, Wilby RL. A comparison of statistical downscaling and climate change factor methods: impacts on low flows in the River Thames, United Kingdom. Climatic Change. 2005; 2(3): 245-268.

  25.  Anandhi A, Frei A, Pierson DC, Schneiderman EM, Zion MS, Lounsbury D, et al. Examination of change factor methodologies for climate change impact assessment, Wat Res Res. 2011; 47(3): p. W03501.

  26.  Waterloo Hydrologic Inc. (WHI). User’s manual of Visual HELP, 2001; p. 335.

  27.  Brooks RH, Corey AT, Hydraulic properties of porous media. Hydrology Papers, No. 3, Colorado State U., Fort Collins, Colorado, 1964; p. 27.

  28.  Schroeder PR, Dozier TS, Zappi PA., McEnroe BM, Sjostrom JW, Peyton RL. The hydrologic evaluation of landfill performance (HELP) model: Engineering documentation for version 3. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 1994; p. 168.

  29.  Berger K, The hydrologic evaluation of landfill performance (HELP) model, Institute of Soil Science, Hamburg, Germany, https://www.geo.uni-hamburg.de/en/bodenkunde/service/help-model.html; 2014.

  30.  Presant EW, Wicklund RE, The soils of waterloo county, Report No 44 of the Ontario Soil Survey,  Department of Soil Science, University of Guelph and The Ontario Department of Agricultural and Food, 1971; p. 104.

ECOPERSIA
Volume 5, Issue 2 - Serial Number 20
June 2017
Pages 1731-1744