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Watershed management is necessary to conserve water resources because the watershed hydrological processes are more affected by climate and land use change, resulting in the problems of droughts, floods, soil erosion, etc. This study determined suitable alternatives that can ensure viable strategies for tackling the climate change impacts at the Soan River Basin (SRB). A framework was applied to assess the impacts of climate change and land use/cover change (LUCC) using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). A multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was used to prioritize watershed management alternatives by comparing watershed management criteria and alternatives using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Framework findings showed a 69 and 31% decline in runoff, and a 58 and 42% increment in evapotranspiration (ET) due to climate change and LUCC, respectively. The top prioritized suitable alternatives were water harvesting structure (WHS) and vegetative cover (VC). Suitability analysis showed that 63.61 and 16.56% area of the SRB were moderately to highly suitable for WHS, respectively. For soil and water management, VC has been found suitable to moderately suitable for 72.68 and 26.75% of the basin area, respectively. So, there should be adoption of such measures which will assist in configuring the climate adaptive strategies. HIGHLIGHTS Climate change and LUCC were assessed through a framework using the SWAT model.; AHP was used for watershed management via suitable alternatives.; Water harvesting structures and vegetative cover were found to be the best alternatives for watershed management.; The selected alternatives can mitigate the climate change impacts on the watershed and may supplement to improve management practices.;

The global hydrological cycle is vulnerable to changing climatic conditions, especially in developing regions, which lack abundant resources and management of freshwater resources. This study evaluates the impacts of climate change on the hydrological regime of the Chirah and Dhoke Pathan sub catchments of the Soan River Basin (SRB), in Pakistan, by using the climate models included in the NEX-GDDP dataset and the hydrological model HBV-light. After proper calibration and validation, the latter is forced with NEX-GDDP inputs to simulate a historic and a future (under the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 emission scenarios) streamflow. Multiple evaluation criteria were employed to find the best performing NEX-GDDP models. A different ensemble was produced for each sub catchment by including the five best performing NEX-GDDP GCMs (ACCESS1-0, CCSM4, CESM1-BGC, MIROC5, and MRI-CGCM3 for Chirah and BNU-ESM, CCSM4, GFDL-CM3. IPSL-CM5A-LR and NorESM1-M for Dhoke Pathan). Our results show that the streamflow is projected to decrease significantly for the two sub catchments, highlighting the vulnerability of the SRB to climate change.