Extreme Hydrological Events and Land Cover Impacts on Water Resources in Haiti: Remote Sensing and Modeling Tools Can Improve Adaptation Planning

Populations in areas with limited hydrological data face ongoing challenges related to water supply and management, with climate change increasing the risks of floods and droughts. New remote sensing and modeling tools can improve land and water management in these regions, especially when combined with limited ground measurements and local knowledge of extreme events. This study examined hydrological extremes and land cover change impacts in the Grande Rivière du Nord watershed, Haiti, using satellite and model-based data. Precipitation extremes were obtained from the Global Precipitation Measurement Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (GPM IMERG; 2000–2025), and streamflow data were sourced from the Group on Earth Observation Global Water Sustainability (GEOGLOWS) system and bias-corrected with a small historical hydrologic database. Annual maximum series were created and fitted with Gumbel, Lognormal, and Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distributions using the L-moment method. Goodness-of-fit tests identified the best models, and precipitation amounts for return periods of 2–100 years were estimated. The precipitation maxima aligned with locally reported extreme events, and GEV provided the best overall fit. Using the bias-corrected streamflow, a hydrologic model was calibrated and validated and then applied to land cover change scenarios. Simulations suggest that moderate land-use change can increase peak flows beyond channel capacity, raising flood risk and informing adaptation planning in northern Haiti, which has limited data.