Projecting land use growth and associated impacts on hydrological balance through scenario-based modelling in the Subarnarekha basin, India

The present study aims to illustrate the efficacy of socio-hydrology in understanding the interaction between coupled human and water systems for sustainable water resource management. Future Land use land cover (LULC) growth is projected under four scenarios – business as usual (BAU), sustainable growth (SG), exponential growth (EG-1 and EG-2), and combined sustainable and economic growth (CS-EG) – for the Subarnarekha basin of India. The associated impacts of the scenarios on hydrological processes are simulated using an integrated modelling system that combines a physically based distributed hydrological model (MIKE SHE/MIKE HYDRO RIVER) and a spatially explicit integrated LULC change model (multilayer perceptron Markov model). The magnitudes of different hydrological variables suggest SG as the most favourable scenario. In contrast, the CS-EG scenario is the most plausible scenario based on the signal-to-noise ratio. The findings may provide valuable knowledge for future LULC planning in the basin. The study suggests incorporating a citizen science approach in LULC planning to reflect local preferences in the decision making process.