Grid-Based Land-Use Composition and Configuration Optimization for Watershed Stormwater Management

This paper demonstrates a new method of optimizing land-use patterns to reduce the negative impacts of urbanization on watershed stormwater systems. The Yong-Ding watershed in western Beijing, China, serves as a case study for this research. A regression model that estimates watershed hydrology response to land use pattern changes is integrated with a land-use allocation model to determine the optimal landuse pattern for minimizing peak flow or total volume at the watershed outlet. This system also uses the CLUE-S model to generate empirical land-use patterns under different development intensities and then determines the land use pattern change constraints for each optimization process. The impacts of optimization are detected by comparing the land use pattern characteristics and watershed hydrology of empirical and optimal scenarios under the same development intensity. The results of the hydrological evaluation suggest that, compared to land-use location control, land-use composition and configuration control may be a more powerful method for minimizing the negative hydrological impact of urbanization. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014