Impact of Climate and Anthropogenic Changes on Streamflows of Kinta River Basin

Assessment of streamflow trends in river catchment provides vital information for flood risk management and efficient use of water resources. This study aimed to compare the effects of anthropogenic and climatic changes on the streamflows of Kinta River Basin. The rainfall and land use data from 2001-2010 were used for the analysis and their impact on the streamflows were observed. The changes in land use were extracted from the classification of Landsat-7 images whereas; the rainfall and streamflows data were acquired from the Department of Irrigation and Drainage, Malaysia. The Mann-Kendall (MK) test was used to investigate the trends in rainfall and streamflows. Assessment of change in streamflows was investigated by Pettitt's test. The results showed the constant trends in rainfall during the study period over Kinta River Basin. However, the streamflows demonstrated significant positive trends at 5% significance level. The significant changes in streamflows were started from November 2006 when the monthly mean increased from 1900 to 3700 m(3)/s. In the case of land use changes, deforestation showed a rapid increase (i.e., 1.18% annually), whereas, the urbanization increased during the period (i.e., 1.15% annually) during the study period. The comparison of the anthropogenic and climatic variable has revealed that land cover changes are one of the major factors in the alteration of surface runoff.