Assessing the Impacts of Agricultural Land on Flood Potential — A Case Study of Taoyuan Coastal Basins

Abstract

With the process of urbanization the agricultural land is often replaced leading to a drastically reduce of the agricultural area in recent years and it also reduces the flood control capacity of the area Therefore if the land with flood mitigation function can be identified in advance in spatial planning and land use management is implemented the impact of land use changes on floods can be effectively reduced To understand the impact of agricultural land on the flood potential this study applies the Physiographic Drainage-Inundation Model (PHD model) to simulate the impact of the agricultural land conversions on flood in Taoyuan Coastal Basins The research results show that when agricultural land is replaced by construction land the flood potential would increase including the inundation depth area and total flood volume which shows that the protection against floods has decreased in the study area Also it would affect floods time: the flood peak would arrive earlier and the flood duration would be longer Additionally the correlation analysis shows that there is a significant correlation between the area of agricultural land change and the amount of flood volume change indicating that the reduction of the agricultural land area would lead to an increase in flood volume This study uses a quantitative method to reveal the importance of agricultural land for flood management Therefore in terms of practical spatial planning we should pay more attention to the potential benefits of agricultural land for flood disaster reduction

Date of Award	2021
Original language	English
Supervisor	Han-Liang Lin (Supervisor)