Investigating the impact of two decades of urbanization on the water balance of the Yzeron peri-urban catchment, France.

This paper addresses the impact of 18 years of urbanization (1990-2008) on the Yzeron meso-scale peri-urban catchment (150 km²), located close to Lyon, France. A simplified version of the distributed hydrological model J2000 was used to perform long term simulations at a daily time step for several land use scenarios. These scenarios were derived from satellite SPOT images from years 1990, 1999 and 2008. The corresponding land use maps were classified into 5 classes depending on the percentage of impervious surfaces and the dominant nonimpervious land use (agriculture or forest). The paper presents the methodology for the model setup and the simulation results for the main water balance components of the catchment: total runoff, runoff components, evapotranspiration and soil moisture. The results highlight the change of the catchment seasonal response from 1990 to 2008, mainly due to a change of the respective contributions of groundwater flow / surface runoff (+ 92% / - 28%, respectively). Monthly mean summer discharge unexpectedly appears to be higher in summer. It is provided by intermittent surface runoff generated by summer storm events. As surface runoff generated on urban surfaces is likely to carry a wide range of contaminants, this has a potential large impact on water quality.