We developed four 2011-2050 land cover change scenarios and modeled the impact of projected land cover change on influent water quality to support long-term planning for the city of Minneapolis, MN. Baseline land cover was from the NLCD2011 database. IPCC SRES scenarios (https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/sres-en.pdf) interpreted by Sohl et al. (2014) (https://doi.org/10.1890/13-1245.1) for the conterminous United States were downscaled from 250 meters to 30 meters. The baseline and scenario land cover data were used as input into the Soil Water and Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to assess the effect of outyear projected land cover change on the source of raw water for the city of Minneapolis, MN. SWAT was used to assess the effect of land cover change on raw water concentrations of sediment, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus. The IPCC SRES evaluated were A1B, A2, B1, and B2. The four scenarios were implemented with (A1Bf) and without (A1B) forest recovery (e.g., conversion of cropland (2011) to forest (2050).

    Units for the MeanDifference variable are different for TN/TP and sediment due to SWAT reporting conventions; TN and TP are in kilograms (kg) and sediment is in megagrams (Mg).  1 Mg = 1,000 kg.  Differences are scenario minus baseline; negative values indicate constituent loads were less for the scenario relative to the baseline.  NLCD2001 was included as a scenario to assess the effect of land cover change.  Negative values for the NLCD2001 scenario indicate that a constituent load was less in 2001 relative to 2011.