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Impact of climate change and urban development on extreme flows in the Grote Nete watershed, Belgium

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Abstract

This study investigates how extreme flows in the Grote Nete watershed located in the Flanders region of Belgium will respond to climate change and urban growth using the hydrological model WetSpa. Three climate change scenarios (low, mean and high), three urban development scenarios (low, medium and high) and the nine combined climate–urban change scenarios are considered. The results indicate that extreme low flows would decrease noticeably by climate change, while they would be less sensitive to urban development. On the other hand, extreme peak flows are predicted to increase considerably due to both climate change and urban growth. It is concluded that coupling the effects of land use change with climate change may lead to severe increase in the frequency river floods in winter as well as the frequency of extreme river low flows in summer.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Dr. V. Ntegeka, Hydraulics Division, K.U. Leuven for providing the CCI-HYDR Perturbation Tool and Dr. L. Poelmans, Flemish Institute for Technological Research NV (VITO) for providing the future urban development scenario maps for Belgium. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their very constructive remarks, which improved the paper considerably.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Mohsen Tavakoli, Florimond De Smedt & Patrick Willems

  2. Department of Natural Resources, Ilam University, Ilam, Iran

    Mohsen Tavakoli

  3. Hydraulics Division, Department of Civil Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Louvain, Belgium

    Thomas Vansteenkiste & Patrick Willems

  4. Flanders Hydraulics Research, Flemish Government, Antwerp, Belgium

    Thomas Vansteenkiste

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  1. Mohsen Tavakoli
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  2. Florimond De Smedt
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  3. Thomas Vansteenkiste
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  4. Patrick Willems
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Correspondence to Mohsen Tavakoli.

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Tavakoli, M., De Smedt, F., Vansteenkiste, T. et al. Impact of climate change and urban development on extreme flows in the Grote Nete watershed, Belgium. Nat Hazards 71, 2127–2142 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-013-1001-7

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