Impacts of land-use changes on the groundwater recharge in the Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam has undergone tremendous transformation in land-use practices in the past few decades. The groundwater-related issues have also been a major concern in the fast-growing southern city of Vietnam. Quantitative prediction of the impact on groundwater recharge due to changes in the land-use pattern of a watershed is crucial in developing sound groundwater management schemes. This study aims to evaluate the impacts of change in land-use patterns on the quantity of groundwater recharge in HCMC. An empirical land-use projection model (Conversion of Land-use and its Effects, Dyna-CLUE) and a hydrological model (Soil and Water Assessment Tool, SWAT) was used for the study. Three future land-use scenarios of Low Urbanization Scenario (LU), Medium Urbanization Scenario (MU) and High Urbanization Scenario (HU) were developed in Dyna-CLUE focusing on the increase of built-up area to generate land-use maps of HCMC until the year 2100. The land-use maps for all three scenarios were then used in the calibrated hydrological model SWAT to get the future recharge in the near future (2016-2045), mid future (2046-2075) and far future (2076-2100). The recharge was observed to increase in the far future of LU by 10% while reduction of 30% and 52% in annual average recharge was observed in far future of MU and HU respectively. It was, thus, observed that change in built-up area has a significant effect on the groundwater recharge in HCMC.