Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

EVALUATION OF CLIMATE CHANGES IN THE GOLESTAN PROVINCE AND ITS EFFECTS ON SURFACE WATER RESOURCES USING WEAP MODEL

Mahyar Alizadeh Tehrani, Ali Farzadian and Saeid Shabanlou

Abstract

In the current situation areas prone to flooding in Iran is estimated about 91 million hectares. In other words, 55 percent of the country was involved in the production of direct run off that about 42 million hectares of it have medium to high capability of flood producing and considering the flood prone of Golestan basin identifying of critical areas is necessary. In this paper we tried to provide a method that using hydrologic models determine the produced flood levels within the basin and also determine the impact of climate change on flood production. First, we divided this basin in 9 sub-basins in GIS environment and using Arc Hydro tool then physical characteristics of basin and sub-basins determined by Arc Hydro and by determining of climate and land use data of required lands hydrologic simulation for sub-basin and whole basin done using WEAP model. Results show that by considering peak discharge among sub-basins in respect to output flood of watershed, we found out Gharnaveh sub-basin has more critical situation. Results also showed that with climate change (climate warming) amount of runoff production will decrease.