CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT ON HYDROLOGY OF BEAS RIVER BASIN IN NORTH WESTERN HIMALAYA

摘要

The water is a scare resource therefore needed prime focus to assess the uncertainty of fresh water availability. The major source of fresh water available on the planet is glacier. Himalayan glaciers are one of the largest glacier system and home to many important rivers of Asia. These rivers provide water for irrigation, drinking purpose and many other uses to more than a billion people living under the stake. The availability of fresh water in near future is under apprehension due to high retreating rate of glaciers. This uncertainty would affect the water resource distribution and management planning subsequently. The cause of this issue is globally changing climate over the years and we need to investigate the impact of changing climate on hydrology to abide the uncertainty of water availability. The coupling between hydrology and climatic variables may be simulated through hydrological modeling and the framework for this modeling is provided through Remote Sensing. Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) is a semi-distributed hydrological model and has been used in this study. This model require minimum four parameter files including soil parameters, Land Use Land Cover (LULC) types with their rooting depth, meteorological forcing parameters and global parameter file. To assess the impact of changing climate on hydrology, the meteorological forcing are used from 1957 to 2012 while keeping LULC unchanged. Since all the parameters are unchanged except the climatic variables so these factors will be responsible for the change in hydrology. To validate the modeled results, the outlet has been taken at Thalot in Himachal Pradesh in India. Total simulated discharge is validated with the observed discharge.