New Approaches to Assessing and Predicting the Hydrologic Impacts of Urban Disturbance Using Isotopes and Transit Time Analysis

Abstract:

Urbanization is an abrupt hydrological disturbance that affects large parts of the world. For ameliorative management, an understanding of how flow partitioning and storage dynamics are affected is crucial, yet this remains limited. This reflects the lack of integrated monitoring and modelling frameworks for characterizing these hydrological response dynamics to incremental urban development.

Here we use a coupled flow-isotope model to assess the impacts of urbanisation (~20%) on stream water age distributions in an 8 km² catchment. A conceptual runoff model was used with flux tracking to estimate the time-varying age of stream water at the outlet and both urban and non-urban sub-catchments over a 3 year period. Combined objective functions of both flow and isotope metric constrained model structures, improved calibration and aided model evaluation. Specifically, we explored (1) the age distribution of stream water draining urban and non-urban areas, (2) the integrated effect of these different land uses at larger catchment scales, and (3) how the modelling can predict the impacts on the stream water age of future urbanization proposals.

The results showed that stream water draining the most urbanized tributary was youngest with a mean transit time (MTT) of < 6 months compared with ~18 months in the non-urban tributary. For the catchment outlet, the MTT was around 9 months. Here, the response of urban areas dominated smaller and moderate events, but rural contributions dominated during the wettest periods, giving a bi-modal distribution of water ages. Predictions for planned developments in the area indicated that just a 5% increase in urban area would give dramatic reductions in MTTs that can propagate to the larger catchment scale. This novel approach offers a framework for understanding the cumulative impacts of disturbances on streams. It can also contribute to the design of more sustainable urban water design in terms of targeted restriction of rapid water fluxes.