Predicting land-use change and its impact on the groundwater

Abstract. Land-use changes are frequently indicated to be one of the main human-induced factors influencing the groundwater system. For land-use change, groundwater re-search has mainly focused on the change in water quality thereby neglecting changes in quantity. The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of land-use changes, from 2000 until 2020, on the hydrological balance and in partic-ular on groundwater quantity, as results from a case study in the Kleine Nete basin, Belgium. New is that this study tests a methodology, which couples a land-use change model with a water balance and a steady-state groundwater model. Four future land-use scenarios (A1, A2, B1 and B2) based on the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) are modelled with the CLUE-S model. Water balance com-ponents, groundwater level and baseflow are simulated us