Land cover change explains the increasing discharge of the Paraná River

Over the past 40 years, the discharge in South America’s Paraná River basin has increased despite no evidence of significant rainfall increases in the basin. In this analysis, we show that the observed multi-decadal increase in discharge can be explained by concomitant changes in land cover that have occurred within the basin during this period. Our analysis also indicates that the peak discharge timing may have shifted concurrently from January/February in the 1970s to March in more recent decades. While land-use effect dominantly alters the long-term temporal dynamics of the river discharge over multi-decades, the change in the seasonality of the discharge can be attributable to the combined effect of the land-use and climate variability. This study suggests that the mean annual discharge is likely to change in the other South American River basins where land transformation is currently taking place, and the shift of the month of peak discharge needs to be taken into consideration to forecast the hydropower generation under changing climate and land conversion. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s10113-018-1321-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.