The inappropriate use of agricultural land is causing a gradual loss of its productive capacity and degradation of water resources by sediments and pollutants. Land use can affect the hydrological processes and soil erosion in the basin. The objective of this work was to simulate different scenarios of land use in the Concórdia River basin using the SWAT model, and to analyze the effects of changes in stream flow and sediment yield, making comparisons with the present land use classification. The scenarios generated were agriculture, native forest and pasture. The basin is located in southern Brazil and has a drainage area of 30.74 km2. In the calibration state, it was obtained the month efficiency coefficient of Nash-Sutcliffe of 0.82 and 0.83 for outflow and sediment yield, respectively. Native forest had the highest decrease in average stream flow, in relation to the present scenario, about 8.70%. Agriculture produced the highest sediment loads, approximately 3 times larger than the present scenario. It was observed that changes in land use can impact the regime and water availability in the basin.
Land use; SWAT model; Water regime
