Hydrological impacts of land use - land cover change on urban flood hazard: A case study of the Jukskei River in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Abstract

Flooding in urban areas is a major natural disaster causing damage to infrastructure, properties and loss of life. In urban areas the major causes behind the changing hydrological processes (i.e., floods) include topography, increase in precipitation due to climate change and change in land-use/land-cover (LULC) over time. The objective of this study is to evaluate the spatial and temporal LULC change impacts on flooding along the Jukskei River in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg, South Africa. The LULC images of 1987 MSS and 2015 OLI derived from Landsat satellite were pre-processed and classified using a supervised classification method. The analysis of LULC revealed that, there is an increase in built-up area from 934,2 ha to 1277,2 ha and reduction in intact and sparse vegetation from 190,5 ha to 62,4 ha and 380,8 ha to 142,1 ha, respectively, between the years 1987 and 2015. The flood depth map, velocity map and flood depth-velocity for different return periods and LULC scenarios have been developed by using an integrated approach of the Hydrological Engineering Centre-River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) and the HEC-GeoRAS with the geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing data. From the analysis, it is observed that there is an increase in flood depth and flood velocity from 2,3 m to 3,0 m and 1,4 m/s to 3,4 m/s, whereas the depth-velocity for the last 28-years increased by 3,4 m²/s from 2,9 m²/s to 6,3 m²/s for the 1987 LULC and the 2015 LULC conditions, respectively. The flood hazard maps generated in this study can be used by local authorities and municipalities for flood disaster management.