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Quantifying The Impact Of Land Cover Change And Of Climate Change On Floods In Northeastern Illinois
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2007
[PDF-2.60 MB]
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Description:Trend analysis of the annual flood peaks on twelve small urbanizing watersheds in the northeastern Illinois indicated that the annual peaks increased in the recent decades. The increase in peaks can be explained by intensive urbanization, which is generally considered a major contributor to the increase in flood peaks. In addition, recent precipitation studies pointed to increasing intensity and frequency of the heavy rainfall, which could have further increased the flood peaks. A hydrologic model was calibrated on two large floods (1954 and 1996) containing simultaneous hourly rainfall-runoff data on all 12 watersheds (1954). It was demonstrated that significant increase in precipitation, and land-use change occurred between 1954 and 1996. Precipitation frequency analysis for different time periods was calculated based on L-moments, hydrologic parameters for different land-use categories were determined using Geographical Information System (GIS), and hydrologic analysis was performed using the HEC-HMS model. This study quantified the increase in flood peaks between 1954 and 1996; quantified the increase in calculated design precipitation; identified the land-use changes in the watershed areas; identified the relative contributions of land cover change and climate change on increasing flood discharges; compared the published regulatory discharges with flood discharges computed for current conditions; and provided tools to analyze future land use and climate scenarios.
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Sea Grant Document Number:ILIN-S-07-001
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Rights Information:Public Domain
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