Impacts of severe land cover changes on the hydrology of southern Quebec watersheds

Summary

This presentation will focus on the results obtained, in hydrological modeling, from the outputs of three MRCC5-CLASS simulations exploring severe land cover changes. The three simulations, driven by the ERA-Interim reanalysis, represent, respectively, realistic land cover (EVAL simulation), a case where all vegetation is replaced by short grass (GRASS simulation) and a case where forest cover is maximized (FOREST simulation). The outputs of these simulations fed into different hydrological scenarios, modeled using HYODROTEL, allowing (1) to assess the effects of severe land use changes on floods in 89 watersheds in southern Quebec, and (2) to assess the effect of land use-climate feedback on the hydrology of two of these watersheds.

Speaker

Annie Poulin obtained a PhD in Water Sciences from INRS-ETE in 2008. She has been a professor in the Department of Construction Engineering at ÉTS since 2010 and, since 2020, has held the Marcelle-Gauvreau Research Chair in Study of the Impact of Environmental Change on Watershed Hydrology. As part of her research, she specializes in hydrological modeling. Since her beginnings as a professor, she has maintained international collaborations with Mexico and Bavaria, Germany.