Assessment of Land Use and Land Cover Change on the Hydrological Response of Saida Watershed Using Swat Model

Dalila Beddal, Brahim Abdelkebir, Mourad Guesri, Sahnoun Fellah

Abstract


The aim of this research is to analyze the impact of three decades of land use and land cover (LULC) changes on the hydrological response of Saida watershed located in Northwest of Algeria. To achieve this goal, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was applied to simulate the monthly streamflow of Saida watershed during the period 1985-2014. The thematic layers of digital elevation model, soil map, LULC maps and weather data were initialized to set up SWAT model. The model was calibrated during the period 1985–2004 and validated during 2005–2014 with the SUFI-2 algorithm. The results of model performance statistics indicated a good agreement between the observed and simulated streamflows at Sidi Boubakeur gauging station, as verified by coefficient of determination (R²) and Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) which are 0.92 and 0.86 during the calibration and 0.68, 0.67 during the validation period, respectively. LULC dynamics derived through satellite image classification for the years 1985, 2000 and 2014 revealed a significant land degradation, with barren land increasing by 38.5% and agricultural land decreasing by 31.7%. Consequently, average streamflow increased significantly from 3.42 m³/s in 1985 to 19 m³/s in 2014 with respect of observed LULC dynamics. The soil type and the groundwater-surface water interaction of Saida watershed have an important role to the water abundance. The findings will help the management and planning of water resources to ensure environmental sustainability of Saida watershed.

Keywords: LULC change, streamflow, SWAT, simulation, hydrolohical response, Saida watershed, Algeria

© 2026 Serbian Geographical Society, Belgrade, Serbia.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Serbia.


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