Analysis of climate change impacts on water cycle in the Yodo river basin using meteorological / vegetation / hydrological models

Abstract

Vegetation plays important roles in some hydrological processes, such as interception and ground water recharge. Therefore, vegetation change induced by climate change may have negative impact on water cycle. Many researchers have analyzed climate change impacts on water cycle in recent years. However, few of them take into account the impacts of vegetation change. This study performed an analysis of climate change impacts using meteorological, dynamic vegetation and hydrological models. We compared the results with those obtained by a conventional method using only meteorological and hydrological models in order to assess the effect of the vegetation model.