Assessment of Climate-Change Impact on Runoff Using Normalized Difference
Vegetation Index
Model Calibration
Subjected by officer of Water Resource Bureau, four basins located on different
regions, namely Fusan (northern region), Chichawan (middle), Sandiman (southern), and
Lisan (eastern), are selected due to their scarcely human-activity. Raingages inside watershed
were counted for calculating average daily rainfall. Corresponding temperature and runoff
data were put together to calibrate parameters with constrain Rosenbork algorithm. Model
parameters are shown on table 1.
Table 1. List of Calibrated Parameters
| Parameter | Fusan | Chichiawan | Sandiman | Lisan |
| Recession constant of interflow, KI | 0.827 | 0.888 | 0.812 | 0.828 |
| Groundwater recession constant, KG | 0.953 | 0.971 | 0.916 | 0.967 |
| Fast Response Zone Capacity, FRC | 263 | 176 | 221 | 163 |
| Slow Response Zone Capacity, SRC | 1231 | 784 | 756 | 853 |
| Surface Runoff Coefficient, GEO | 4.75 | 2.6 | 1.54 | 1.67 |
| Infiltration coefficient, A | 1009 | 1206 | 1345 | 1297 |
| Evaportranspiration coefficient, CET | 91 | 83 | 76 | 112 |
Climate-Change Scenario
Output of General Circulation Model
Usually, assessment of climate-change impact uses scenario on double CO
2 (2xCO
2)
concentration condition. There are three ways to composite scenario:
- Building forecasting model by analyzing historical data;
- Implementing sensitive analysis by
changing statistics of historical data;
- disaggregating GCM’s monthly output to daily
rainfall and temperature data.
Intergovernment Pannel on Climate Change (IPCC) does no
suggest the first two approaches because history cannot forecast future in non-linearly
complex system. This study adopts output of GCM to estimate 2xCO
2 scenario.
Tung (1996) uses output of four major GCMs (CCCM, GFDL, GISS, and UK89) from
NCAR to estimate rainfall ratio and temperature difference of Taiwan’s major meteorologic
stations. Data were classified into 4 regions, only UK89 show different results in northern
and southern regions. GISS show low values in southern stations. Tung suggests that
taking output from different grid causes inconformity. For this study, only CCCM provides
output at grid 121.9°E 26.3°N (Table 2) and thereby is selected for generating daily data.
Table 2. Weather change ratio from output of CCCM
| Month |
P2xCO2 / P1xCO2 | T2xCO2 - T1xCO2 | Month | P2xCO2 / P1xCO2 | T2xCO2 -
T1xCO2 |
| January | 0.81 | 2.71 | July | 1.00 | 2.09 |
| February | 1.05 | 3.66 | August | 1.19 | 1.75 |
| March | 0.67 | 4.73 | September | 1.40 | 2.62 |
| April | 1.11 | 4.16 | October | 1.01 | 2.45 |
| May | 1.13 | 4.21 | November | 0.86 | 2.39 |
| June | 1.39 | 2.52 | December | 0.66 | 3.42 |
| | | | Average | 3.05 |
Synthetic daily precipitation and temperature
Output of GCM provides monthly average data. A Markov chain process is applied to
disaggregate them to daily data. The chance of rainfall existence is decided by preceding
day’s rainfall and the probability of monthly rainfall (Richardson, 1981). Once rainfall
chance is decided, amount of rainfall can be described by one-parameter Weibull distribution
(Tung, 1995)
Fxm(x)=1-Exp[-(1.191X/Lm)0.75 ] ……………………………………(5)
Here L
m is the average rainfall of month-m. Computation starts from generating random
number of [0,1] uniform distribution and then calculating F
xm, and rainfall X.
Because only daily average temperature is needed, a first-order Markov-chain model is
developed to calculate daily temperature using standard deviation and auto-correlation of
monthly temperature:
Tij=Tavgi+ACFi[ Ti,j-1-Tavgi]
+TSDi+NORMx(1-ACFi2)0.5 …………(6)
Here T
ij is temperature of month I, day J. Tavg
I is average temperature of mouth I, ACF
I is
auto-correlation of mouth-i. TSD
I is the standard deviation of temperature of mouth-i.
NORMx is normal distribution random number.
Spatial distribution of Vegetation Index
literatures review
Normalized different vegetation index (NDVI) derived by satellite remotely sensed data
contributes spatial distribution of biomass. Frieal etl. (1995) believes that NDVI is a major
tool to utilize remote sensing in hydrology for deriving model parameter. Ozenda and Borel
(1990) found that 1°C rise of temperature causes 180 meters raising of vegetation belt from
data of the mountains of Alps. Houerou (1992) found similar trend from Mediterranean data
that vegetation zone lifts up 100 meter with temperature rising 0.55°C. He also concluded
Mediterranean plant may lifting up 545 meters due to 3°C rising of temperature . Because of
lack of similar study in Taiwan, the trend of 180 meter/1°C is adopted in this study to quantify
temperature-induced vegetation change.
Relationship between vegetation and hydrologic-model parameters
Landsat 5/TM images acquiesced on January 9, 1995 at 9:33 morning were used. Solar
zenith angle of the scene was 58.36 and azimuth was 140.36. Original 30-meter-resolution
data are rectified and re-sampled into 25-meter resolution, and were registered to Transverse
Mercator (WGS84) projection. Bi-direction reflectance distribution function is used to adjust
topographic effect.
Five model-parameters relate to surface roughness, soil infiltration, plant
evapotranspiration were counted for their relationship with remote sensing index. After
different tries to soil brightness and vegetation indexes, results show that evapotranspiration
coefficient (CET) appears better correlation with NDVI (Table.3 and Fig.3).
Table 3. NDVI and CET values of 1xCO2 and 2xCO2 conditions
| Basin |
1 x CO2 | 2 x CO2 |
| N D V I |
CET | N D V I’ | CET’ |
| Fusan | 0 .4 0 0 2 | 91 | 0 .3436 | 91 |
| Chichiawan | 0.3108 | 83 | 0.3701 | 95 |
| Sandiman | 0.2215 | 76 | 0.3034 | 85 |
| Lisan | 0.4212 | 112 | 0.4591 | 108 |
Fig.3 Regression plot of NDVI via CET
NDVI values in Table 3 are average of all pixels inside basins. When running 2xCO
2
scenario, a rising annual temperature (3°C) makes a right shift of NDVI-elevation curve 540
meters (3°C x 180 meter / 1°C) (Fig.4). A new NDVI average is estimated and new CET
can be calculated from regression equation (CET = 147.9NDVI+40.44).
Fig.4 Elevation-NDVI curves of Fusan