abstract: Rapid urbanization and population growth occurring in the cities of South Western
United States have led to significant modifications in its environment at local and
regional scales. Both local and regional climate changes are expected to have massive
impacts on the hydrology of Colorado River Basin (CRB), thereby accentuating the need
of study of hydro-climatic impacts on water resource management in this region. This
thesis is devoted to understanding the impact of land use and land cover (LULC) changes
on the local and regional hydroclimate, with the goal to address urban planning issues
and provide guidance for sustainable development.
In this study, three densely populated urban areas, viz. Phoenix, Las Vegas and
Denver in the CRB are selected to capture the various dimensions of the impacts of land
use changes on the regional hydroclimate in the entire CRB. Weather Research and
Forecast (WRF) model, incorporating the latest urban modeling system, is adopted for
regional climate modeling. Two major types of urban LULC changes are studied in this
Thesis: (1) incorporation of urban trees with their radiative cooling effect, tested in
Phoenix metropolitan, and (2) projected urban expansion in 2100 obtained from
Integrated Climate and Land Use Scenarios (ICLUS) developed by the US
Environmental Protection Agency for all three cities.
The results demonstrated prominent nocturnal cooling effect of due to radiative
shading effect of the urban trees for Phoenix reducing urban surface and air temperature
by about 2~9 °C and 1~5 °C respectively and increasing relative humidity by 10~20%
during an mean diurnal cycle. The simulations of urban growth in CRB demonstratedii
nocturnal warming of about 0.36 °C, 1.07 °C, and 0.94 °C 2m-air temperature and
comparatively insignificant change in daytime temperature, with the thermal environment
of Denver being the most sensitive the urban growth. The urban hydroclimatic study
carried out in the thesis assists in identifying both context specific and generalizable
relationships, patterns among the cities, and is expected to facilitate urban planning and
management in local (cities) and regional scales. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering 2017
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:asu.edu/item:45029 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Contributors | Upreti, Ruby (Author), Wang, Zhihua (Advisor), Vivoni, Enrique R. (Committee member), Mascaro, Giuseppe (Committee member), White, Dave (Committee member), Arizona State University (Publisher) |
| Source Sets | Arizona State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Masters Thesis |
| Format | 97 pages |
| Rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/, All Rights Reserved |
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