Assessment of potential suspended sediment yield in Japan in the 21st century with reference to the general circulation model climate change scenarios

In recent decades, soil erosion by water has become a worldwide problem, especially with climate change and progressive declines in the ratio of natural resources to human populations. Changes in future climate will influence soil erosion, particularly suspended sediment (SS) yield, and alter the effectiveness of water resources management strategies from a water quality perspective. We qualitatively assessed future changes in SS yield in Japan. We focused on the impacts of future hydrological changes projected by two models, the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate (MIROC) and the Meteorological Research Institute Atmospheric General Circulation Model (MRI-GCM), whose results have produced monthly data sets for the whole of Japan. The impacts of future climate changes on SS in Japan depend on the balance between changes in climatic and geologic factors. Methods for assessing impact using the catchment simulator were expanded to estimate the SS yield for the whole of Japan. The results indicated that SS generation will increase by the 2090s, with an 8% increase predicted using MRI-GCM data and a 24% increase using MIROC data, compared to present-day values measured by the Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System (AMEDAS) of the Japan Meteorological Agency. Analysis by month showed the largest increases in SS in September, related to the frequency of extreme events such as typhoons. Increased SS can have negative effects on both society and the environment, including reduced crop productivity, worsened water quality, lower effective reservoir water levels, flooding and habitat destruction. Prediction of the impacts of future climate change on SS generation is crucial for effective environmental planning and management.

[1]  Taikan Oki,et al.  Estimation of total nitrogen transport and retention during flow in a catchment using a mass balance model incorporating the effects of land cover distribution and human activity information. , 2010, Water science and technology : a journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research.

[2]  C. Miao,et al.  A preliminary estimate of human and natural contributions to the changes in water discharge and sediment load in the Yellow River , 2011 .

[3]  John F. Orwin,et al.  An inexpensive turbidimeter for monitoring suspended sediment , 2005 .

[4]  R. Allan Freeze,et al.  A stochastic‐conceptual analysis of rainfall‐runoff processes on a hillslope , 1980 .

[5]  E. Anagnostou,et al.  Flash flood forecasting, warning and risk management: the HYDRATE project , 2011 .

[6]  Hiroshi Seino,et al.  An Estimation of Distribution of Meteorological Elements using GIS and AMeDAS Data , 1993 .

[7]  Doerthe Tetzlaff,et al.  Connectivity between landscapes and riverscapes—a unifying theme in integrating hydrology and ecology in catchment science? , 2007 .

[8]  Loredana Antronico,et al.  Soil erosion risk scenarios in the Mediterranean environment using RUSLE and GIS: An application model for Calabria (southern Italy) , 2009 .

[9]  G. R. Foster,et al.  A Process-Based Soil Erosion Model for USDA-Water Erosion Prediction Project Technology , 1989 .

[10]  J. García‐Ruiz,et al.  Hydrological and erosive consequences of farmland abandonment in Europe, with special reference to the Mediterranean region – A review , 2011 .

[11]  D. Pierson,et al.  Suspended sediment source areas and future climate impact on soil erosion and sediment yield in a New York City water supply watershed, USA , 2013 .

[12]  J. García‐Ruiz,et al.  The effects of land uses on soil erosion in Spain: A review , 2010 .

[13]  Taikan Oki,et al.  Assessing environmental improvement options from a water quality perspective for an urban-rural catchment , 2012, Environ. Model. Softw..

[14]  James P. M. Syvitski,et al.  Global variability of daily total suspended solids and their fluxes in rivers , 2003 .

[15]  G. Hornberger,et al.  On modelling the impacts of phosphorus stripping at sewage works on in-stream phosphorus and macrophyte/epiphyte dynamics: a case study for the River Kennet. , 2002, The Science of the total environment.

[16]  D.D.V. Morgan,et al.  A predictive model for the assessment of soil erosion risk , 1984 .

[17]  A. Lepistö,et al.  Application of catchment scale sediment delivery model INCA-Sed to four small study catchments in Finland. , 2010 .

[18]  Véronique Beaujouan,et al.  A nitrogen model for European catchments: INCA, new model structure and equations , 2002 .

[19]  Tomoharu Hori,et al.  Modeling shallow landslides and river bed variation associated with extreme rainfall-runoff events in a granitoid mountainous forested catchment in Japan , 2011 .

[20]  E. Cowling,et al.  The Nitrogen Cascade , 2003 .

[21]  E. J. Wilson,et al.  A semi-distributed ntegrated itrogen model for multiple source assessment in tchments (INCA): Part I — model structure and process equations , 1998 .

[22]  W. G. Knisel,et al.  CREAMS: a field scale model for Chemicals, Runoff, and Erosion from Agricultural Management Systems [USA] , 1980 .

[23]  Toshio Koike,et al.  Global potential soil erosion with reference to land use and climate changes , 2003 .

[24]  Sung-gwan Jung,et al.  Potential Soil Loss Prediction for Land Resource Management in the Nakdong River Basin , 2005 .

[25]  Taikan Oki,et al.  Long-term changes in flood event patterns due to changes in hydrological distribution parameters in a rural―urban catchment, Shikoku, Japan , 2011 .

[26]  L. F. Huggins,et al.  ANSWERS: A Model for Watershed Planning , 1980 .

[27]  Keith Beven,et al.  TOPMODEL : a critique. , 1997 .

[28]  A. Wade,et al.  Eutrophication control in river-systems: an application of INCA-P to the River Lugg , 2007 .

[29]  Keith Beven,et al.  A dynamic TOPMODEL , 2001 .

[30]  Tomoharu Hori,et al.  Ecological and hydrological responses to climate change in an urban-forested catchment, Nagara River basin, Japan , 2012 .

[31]  A. Wade,et al.  Modelling phosphorus dynamics in multi-branch river systems: a study of the Black River, Lake Simcoe, Ontario, Canada. , 2011, The Science of the total environment.

[32]  Jakub Langhammer,et al.  Evaluation of suspended load changes using AnnAGNPS and SWAT semi-empirical erosion models , 2008 .

[33]  Soil Erosion Analysis and Modelling: A Review , 2000 .

[34]  Taikan Oki,et al.  Probability assessment of flood and sediment disasters in Japan using the Total Runoff-Integrating Pathways model , 2013 .

[35]  Murugesu Sivapalan,et al.  Transformation of point rainfall to areal rainfall: Intensity-duration-frequency curves , 1998 .

[36]  R. Lal,et al.  The potential of world cropland soils to sequester C and mitigate the greenhouse effect , 1999 .

[37]  D. Lawrence,et al.  Fine sediment delivery and transfer in lowland catchments: modelling suspended sediment concentrations in response to hydrological forcing , 2007 .

[38]  Hisashi Nakamura,et al.  Reproducibility and Future Projection of the Midwinter Storm-Track Activity over the Far East in the CMIP3 Climate Models in Relation to “Haru-Ichiban” over Japan , 2009 .

[39]  Guangxing Wang,et al.  Mapping Multiple Variables for Predicting Soil Loss by Geostatistical Methods with TM Images and a Slope Map , 2003 .

[40]  Tomoharu Hori,et al.  Modeling reservoir sedimentation associated with an extreme flood and sediment flux in a mountainous granitoid catchment, Japan , 2011 .

[41]  E. J. Wilson,et al.  A semi-distributed integrated flow and nitrogen model for multiple source assessment in catchments (INCA): Part II — application to large river basins in south Wales and eastern England , 1998 .

[42]  S. Solomon.  The Physical Science Basis : Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , 2007 .

[43]  G. R. Foster,et al.  Predicting soil erosion by water : a guide to conservation planning with the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) , 1997 .

[44]  Vincent R. Gray.  Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis Summary for Policymakers , 2007 .

[45]  T. Oki,et al.  Investigating the roles of climate seasonality and landscape characteristics on mean annual and monthly water balances , 2008 .

[46]  E. Matzner,et al.  Synthesis of Nitrogen Pools and Fluxes from European Forest Ecosystems , 1998 .

[47]  Rik Leemans,et al.  Land use and cover change (LUCC). Open science meeting. , 1997 .

[48]  Masson-Delmotte,et al.  The Physical Science Basis , 2007 .

[49]  S. Hagemann,et al.  Statistical bias correction of global simulated daily precipitation and temperature for the application of hydrological models , 2010 .

[50]  R. Wilby,et al.  A review of the potential impacts of climate change on surface water quality , 2009 .

[51]  S. Kanae,et al.  Global Hydrological Cycles and World Water Resources , 2006, Science.

[52]  T. Iizumi,et al.  ELPIS-JP: a dataset of local-scale daily climate change scenarios for Japan , 2012, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[53]  M. Stocking,et al.  Developing a simple yet practical method of soil-loss estimation , 1982 .

[54]  Bofu Yu,et al.  Plot-scale rainfall-runoff characteristics and modeling at six sites in Australia and Southeast Asia , 1997 .

[55]  D. Walling,et al.  Recent trends in the suspended sediment loads of the world's rivers , 2003 .

[56]  B. Emmett,et al.  Impact of nitrogen deposition on nitrogen cycling in forests : a synthesis of NITREX data , 1998 .

[57]  Taikan Oki,et al.  Modelling the catchment-scale environmental impacts of wastewater treatment in an urban sewage system for CO₂ emission assessment. , 2010, Water science and technology : a journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research.

[58]  D. Pimentel,et al.  Environmental and Economic Costs of Soil Erosion and Conservation Benefits , 1995, Science.

[59]  Xin-bao Zhang,et al.  Current changes of sediment yields in the upper Yangtze River and its two biggest tributaries, China , 2004 .

[60]  J. Dearing,et al.  Coupling temporal and spatial dimensions of global sediment flux through lake and marine sediment records , 2003 .

[61]  Tomoharu Hori,et al.  Assessing the effects of consecutive sediment-control dams using a numerical hydraulic experiment to model river-bed variation , 2013 .

[62]  J. Palutikof,et al.  Climate change 2007 : impacts, adaptation and vulnerability , 2001 .

[63]  M. Fenn,et al.  Ecological Effects of Nitrogen Deposition in the Western United States , 2003 .

[64]  Andrew A. Millward,et al.  Adapting the RUSLE to model soil erosion potential in a mountainous tropical watershed , 1999 .

[65]  K. Beven,et al.  A physically based, variable contributing area model of basin hydrology , 1979 .

[66]  B. Warkentin,et al.  Soils in an environmental context: an American perspective , 1996 .

[67]  William H. McDowell,et al.  The Long-term Effects of Disturbance on Organic and Inorganic Nitrogen Export in the White Mountains, New Hampshire , 2000, Ecosystems.

[68]  Taikan Oki,et al.  Spatial and temporal variation in nutrient parameters in stream water in a rural-urban catchment, Shikoku, Japan: effects of land cover and human impact. , 2011, Journal of Environmental Management.

[69]  P. Owens,et al.  Simulating fine sediment delivery in lowland catchments: model development and application of INCA-Sed. , 2006 .

[70]  L. R. Oldeman,et al.  Global Assessment of Human-Induced Soil Degradation , 1999 .

[71]  David Alexander,et al.  Disaster risk reduction: An alternative viewpoint , 2012 .