Climate change and human activities alter the hydrologic systems and exerted global scale impacts on our environment with significant implications for water resources. Climate change can be characterized by the change of precipitation and temperature, and both precipitation pattern change and global warming are associated with the increase in frequency of flooding or drought and low flows. With increasing water demand from domestic, agricultural, commercial, and industrial sectors, humans are increasingly becoming a significant component of the hydrologic cycle. Human activities have transformed hydrologic processes at spatial scales ranging from local to global. Human activities affecting watershed hydrology include land use change, dam construction and reservoir operation, groundwater pumping, surface water withdrawal, irrigation, return flow, and others. In this thesis, the hydromorphology (i.e., the change of coupled hydrologic and human systems) of the Econlockhatchee River (Econ River for short) is studied. Due to the growth of the Orlando metropolitan area the Econ basin has been substantially urbanized with drastic change of the land cover. The land use / land cover change from 1940s to 2000s has been quantified by compiling existing land cover data and digitizing aerial photography images. Rainfall data have been analyzed to determine the extent that climate change has affected the river flow compared to land use change. The changes in stream flow at the annual scale and low flows are analyzed. The Econ River has experienced minimal changes in the amount of annual streamflow but significant changes to the amount of low flows. These changes are due to urbanization and other human interferences.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-3949 |
| Date | 01 January 2013 |
| Creators | Baker, John |
| Publisher | University of Central Florida |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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