Land (Nov 2023)

Unravelling the Impacts of Climate Variability on Surface Runoff in the Mouhoun River Catchment (West Africa)

  • Cheick Oumar Zouré,
  • Arsène Kiema,
  • Roland Yonaba,
  • Bernard Minoungou

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/land12112017
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 11
p. 2017

Abstract

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This study assesses the impacts of climate variability on surface runoff generation in the Mouhoun River Catchment (MRC) in Burkina Faso, in the West African Sahel. The study uses a combination of observed and reanalysis data over the period 1983–2018 to develop a SWAT model (KGE = 0.77/0.89 in calibration/validation) further used to reconstitute the complete time series for surface runoff. Results show that annual rainfall and surface runoff follow a significant upward trend (rainfall: 4.98 mm·year−1, p-value = 0.029; runoff: 0.45 m3·s−1·year−1, p-value = 0.013). Also, rainfall appears to be the dominant driver of surface runoff (Spearman’s ρ = 0.732, p-value p-value = 0.386). The study highlights the added value of the coupling of hydrological modeling and reanalysis datasets to analyze the rainfall–runoff relationship in data-scarce and poorly gauged environments and therefore raises pathways to improve knowledge and understanding of the impacts of climate variability in Sahelian hydrosystems.

Keywords