The main objective of the study is to evaluate the roles of climate
change and human factors on runoff, baseflow, and hydrological drought
characteristics at a watershed scale. The novelty of the study is to
assess separately the cascading, indirect, accumulative effects of
climate change and human factors on hydrological drought, i.e. runoff
and baseflow. This involved analyzing change points to divide the
available hydrometeorological data into a baseline and a perturbed
period. We applied two hydrological models, SWAT and HBV-light, and two
nonparametric climate elasticity of runoff to identify the contribution
of climate change and human factors in influencing runoff and baseflow
processes. The hydrological models were used to simulate naturalized
runoff and baseflow during the perturbed period. The temporal variation
in the characteristics of the baseflow regime is expressed as baseflow
index. Drought indices, standardized runoff index and standardized
baseflow index were used as hydrological drought indicators. A
significant change in runoff reduction in the Kamienna watershed began
in 1982, suggesting that human factors play a dominant role in
influencing runoff. In addition, we found that an increase in baseflow
and a decrease in hydrological drought events in the 2010s are a
positive long-term effect of human factors such as construction of dams
in the watershed. Finally, analyses of changes in land cover dynamics in
the watershed over the past four decades using satellite imagery are
used to confirm the presence of human interventions.