Impact of Altered Land Use on the Hydrology of Urban Territories

K. Kang, J. Lee, J. A. Chun, and D. Timlin

This paper describes the impact of altered land use on urban flooding in Northwest Indiana over a 10-year time span between 1992 and 2001. The studied watershed, the Great Calumet basin, is located on the south shore of Lake Michigan, which is well known as a highly industrialized area. The flood peaks and the time-to-peak values are used to analyze the flooding problems of the study area. The study uses a Hydrologic Engineering Center for Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) model to explore the change in land use represented by Curve Number (CN). The model parameters are calibrated using archived rainfall data available in National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and United States Geological Survey (USGS) Instantaneous Data Archive (IDA). All four simulations show that the peak flow of simulated hydrographs in the terrain conditions of 2001 is by 22% higher than that in the terrain of 1992. The paper concludes with the results of simulation analyses that can be used to remedy flooding problems in the study area.