The Influence of Forest Regrowth on the Stream Discharge in the North Carolina Piedmont Watersheds

This study focuses on the relationships of watershed runoff with historical land use/land cover (LULC) and climate trends. Over the 20th Century, LULC in the Southeast United States, particularly the North Carolina Piedmont, has evolved from an agriculture dominated to an extensively forested landscape with more recent localized urbanization. The regrowth of forest has an important influence on the hydrology of the region as it enhances ecosystem interaction with recent climate change. During 1920-2009, the amount of precipitation in some parts of the North Carolina Piedmont forest regrowth area showed increasing trends without corresponding increments in runoff. We employed the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to backcast long-term hydrologic behavior of watersheds in North Carolina with different LULC conditions: (1) LULC conversion from agricultural to forested area and (2) long-term stable forested area. Comparing U.S. Geological Survey-measured stream discharge with SWAT-simulated stream discharge under the assumption of constant 2006 LULC, we found significant stream discharge underprediction by SWAT in two LULC conversion watersheds during the early simulation period (1920s) with differences gradually decreasing by the mid-1970s. This model bias suggests that forest regrowth on abandoned agricultural land was a key factor contributing to mitigate the impact of increased precipitation on runoff due to increasing water consumption driven by changes in vegetation.