30/01/2023 13:11 Assessment of changes in land use and occupation on the hydrological regime of a basin in the west of Bahia

of Bahia - ScienceDirect

Journal of South American Earth Sciences

Available online 30 January 2023, 104218
In Press, Journal Pre-proof

Assessment of changes in land use and occupation on the

hydrological regime of a basin in the west of Bahia
Lorena Souza da Silva a, Lorena Lima Ferraz b , Lucas Farias de Sousa b, Raildo Mota de Jesus b
, Carlos Amilton Silva Santos c, Felizardo Adenilson Rocha c

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Abstract

The western region of Bahia is one of the most active agricultural frontiers in the country,
where areas of vegetation have been replaced by agricultural areas, both rainfed and irrigated.
These changes have resulted in conflicts over water use in the region, particularly in this study
area, which corresponds to the Sítio Grande flow measurement point, representing a sub-
basin of the Rio Grande. Although this scenario of conflicts and water unavailability is
attributed to human actions, the decrease in water availability may also be associated with
factors such as climate change. This constitutes the main aim of this study, which was to
evaluate the hydrological responses to climate change and to land use and occupation using
the SWAT hydrological model. The model was calibrated and validated for 3 different periods
(1986–1990; 1991–1995), (1996–2000; 2001–2005), (2006–2010; 2011–2015), respectively. These
periods were divided so as to portray the observed flow of the drainage basin as closely as
possible, since over the years the use and occupation of the land have changed. The
simulations were based on the fixing-changing method, in which the three periods were
simulated for three different maps of land use and occupation (1990, 2005, and 2015), fixing
the land use and occupation map and changing the simulation period. The results show that
the SWAT performed satisfactorily in its analysis of the three periods studied on a monthly
scale. The areas of all forest types of the Cerrado biome in this sub-basin were reduced by
27.47% between 1990 and 2015, while agricultural areas grew by 192.48%. Land use change
scenarios indicate a reduction in flow. If the land use and occupation of the initial period of

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30/01/2023 13:11 Assessment of changes in land use and occupation on the hydrological regime of a basin in the west of Bahia - ScienceDirect

the study (1990) had remained unchanged and the natural vegetation had been preserved, the
Q90, maximum, average, and minimum flows would be higher than in the current scenario.

Introduction

The management of water resources is an area of constant interest and discussion for
governments and is always present in the literature and popular debates. This discussion
should take place within the scope of drainage basins, which the National Water Resources
Policy (Federal Law No. 9.433/97) recommended as a unit for water planning and management
in Brazil. This requires understanding of the hydrological behavior of the basin, including
identification and quantification of the impacts of human actions, climate change, and social
effects on its use.

Changes in land use and occupation are among the most significant factors in changes in the
hydrological behavior of a basin (de Medeiros et al., 2019; Poorheydari et al., 2020), since these
changes modify surface runoff, altering hydrological components, such as aquifer recharge,
infiltration, interception, and evapotranspiration (Kibii et al., 2021; Puno et al., 2019; Kumar et
al., 2022).

In developing countries such as Brazil, which have rapidly-growing populations and are
mainly dependent on the agricultural economy, changes in land use are widespread, and this
is where the highest net losses from forests to agricultural land have been recorded since 1990
(dos Santos and Naval, 2022). This is occurring in the western region of the state of Bahia, the
area addressed in this study, as a result of the replacement of expandable areas of the Cerrado
biome with intensively-irrigated agricultural lands. This has been causing water supply and
demand conflicts, in a region that is also affected by climate change (Pousa et al., 2019).

The western region of Bahia is one of the most active agricultural frontiers in the country.
According to the Levantamento Sistemático da Produção Agrícola (LSPA) realizado pelo
Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE, 2022) Bahia is the state with the largest
grain growing area in the Northeast of Brazil. In 2022, the cultivated area 3.3 million hectares
(ha), which corresponds, in IBGE projections, to a an expansion of 3.6% in the annual
comparison. Mainly soybeans, corn, and cotton. Another important aspect under discussion
in this region is the high growth of irrigable areas, growing from 9 center pivots in 1985 to
1550 center pivots in 2016 (ANA 2020).

Although this scenario of conflict and water unavailability is attributed to human actions,
factors such as climate change and rainfall patterns may also be associated with the decrease
in water availability, which can be understood through hydrological modeling. The Soil and
Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model is a promising tool that allows deeper and more
appropriate knowledge on water quality, water balance, and sediment production to be
obtained. Studies applied in the Northeast region using the SWAT model are still incipient
and generally explore the features of the model for calculating the water balance and sediment
production in future scenarios. There are no records of its use to evaluate hydrological

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30/01/2023 13:11 Assessment of changes in land use and occupation on the hydrological regime of a basin in the west of Bahia - ScienceDirect

responses over historic time series, or of the applicability of the method of fixing climatic
variables and land use change.

This study sought to analyze the calibration and validation of the model across different time
series of land use and occupation (1990, 2000, and 2015), in order to assess the impacts of
these changes on the flow regime of the Sítio Grande outlet. It addresses the following
questions: (a) If a scenario of greater conservation of vegetation were to be maintained for a
period of 36 years, what effect would it have on the surface flow? (b) If the simulated period
(1980–2015) remained constant and only the land use and occupation changed (changes that
occurred in the base maps), what effect would this have on the available water volume? These
hypothetical scenarios were designed to understand which factor caused and/or would cause
greater impacts on the flow of the tributary of the Rio Grande and constitute the main aim of
this study.

Section snippets

Study area
The study was carried out on a tributary of the Rio Grande (Fig. 1) in the drainage area
upstream of the Sitio Grande station (46415000). The Rio Grande is the last major tributary on
the left bank of the São Francisco River and one of the main contributors to its maintenance
during dry periods. It covers 33.73% of the municipality of São Desidério, which, according to
IBGE (2023) has an area of 15,156 km2 and 34,764 inhabitants.

The climate of the region is classified as Aw (tropical with…

Model calibration and validation

The parameters identified as the most sensitive are shown in Table 5. Eight parameters were
needed to simulate the hydrological processes of this tributary of the Rio Grande. The
parameters that exert the greatest influence are related to groundwater recharge,
evapotranspiration, lateral runoff, surface runoff, and soil depth.

The CN2 (curve number method for the AMC II moisture condition) was the parameter with
the highest sensitivity. The strong influence of this parameter has also been…

Conclusion

The SWAT model was able to describe the monthly hydrological behavior in a satisfactory to
good manner. According to the statistical criteria of the Rio Grande sub-basin for the three
modeled periods. Flow duration curves for each analysis period show the simulated and
observed difference in flow data and help to understand the estimated water behavior.

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30/01/2023 13:11 Assessment of changes in land use and occupation on the hydrological regime of a basin in the west of Bahia - ScienceDirect

All types of forest formations in the Cerrado biome in this sub-basin saw their areas reduced
by 27.47% between 1990 and 2015. While…

Funding

This research was funded by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior –

Brasil (CAPES) through payment of master's level salary.…

Authors contributions
All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data
collection and analysis were performed by Lorena Souza da Silva, Lucas Farias de Sousa,
Lorena Lima Ferraz, Raildo Mota de Jesus, Carlos Amilton Silva Santos and Felizardo
Adenilson Rocha. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Lorena Souza da Silva and
all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved
the final manuscript.

Conceptualization: Lorena Souza da…

Availability of data and material

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the
Agência Nacional de Águas (ANA) repository, link
[http://www.snirh.gov.br/hidroweb/apresentacao]; Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia (INMET)
repository, link [https://bdmep.inmet.gov.br/]; Agritempo repository, link
[https://www.agritempo.gov.br/agritempo/index.jsp]; and MapBiomas, link
[https://mapbiomas.org/].…

Code availability (software application or custom code)

Software ArcGis and ArcSWAT.…

Ethics approval
Not applicable.…

Consent to participate

Not applicable.…

Consent for publication

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Not applicable.…

Uncited references

Abbaspour et al., 2007; Brighenti et al., 2016; Heo et al., 2015; Agência Nacional das Águas,.…

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Lorena Souza da Silva: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Validation,
Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding
acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Lorena Lima Ferraz: Writing –
review & editing, Visualization, Validation, Software, Methodology. Lucas Farias de Sousa:
Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Software, Methodology. Raildo Mota de Jesus:
Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis,…

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal
relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.…

Acknowledgements
Authors acknowledge the financial support of the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de
Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES).…

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