Authors: J L Siqueira Júnior J Tomasella D A Rodriguez
Publish Date: 2015/02/03
Volume: 129, Issue: 1-2, Pages: 117-129
Abstract
Brazilian strategic interest in the Madeira River basin one of the most important of the southern Amazon tributaries includes the development of hydropower to satisfy the country’s growing energy needs and new waterways to boost regional trade and economic development Because of evidences that climate change impacts the hydrological regime of rivers the aim of this study was to assess how global climate change and regional land cover change caused by deforestation could affect the river’s hydrological regime To achieve this goal we calibrated a largescale hydrological model for the period from 1970–1990 and analyzed the ability of the model to simulate the present hydrological regime when climate model simulations were used as input Climate change projections produced by climate models were used in the hydrological model to generate scenarios with and without regional landuse and landcover changes induced by forest conversion to pasture for the period from 2011–2099 Although results show variability among models consensus scenarios indicated a decrease in the lowflow regime When the simulations included forest conversion to pasture climate change impacts on low flows were reduced in the upper basin while in the lower basin discharges were affected along the whole year due to the more vigorous landuse conversion in the Brazilian region of the basin
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