Diagnosing socioeconomic dominance in rainfall-runoff relationship changes across global basins

Global warming and intensifying human activities are altering the global hydrologic cycle, raising concerns about future water availability. Although many studies have examined changes in runoff, the global-scale association between socioeconomic development and changes in rainfall-runoff relationships (RRRs) remains insufficiently quantified. Here, changes in RRRs were diagnosed across 1492 basins during 1990-2015 using annual runoff coefficients, and dominant covariates were identified using a conceptual rainfall-runoff model with a covariate-driven time-varying parameter. Candidate climatic, vegetation, and socioeconomic covariates were tested individually in comparable schemes, and dominance was defined diagnostically as the covariate that produced the largest improvement in runoff simulation skill relative to a constant-parameter baseline. A changepoint in the mean runoff coefficient was detected in 1201 basins (80.5%). Among diagnosed basins, natural environmental covariates (climate and vegetation) were most frequently diagnosed as dominant (67.7%), whereas socioeconomic covariates accounted for the remaining 32.3%. Within the socioeconomic category, macro indicators (GDP, population, and per capita GDP) were more frequently diagnosed as dominant than intervention-specific proxies. Within socioeconomically dominated basins, runoff coefficients decreased more often than increased (65.9% versus 34.1%). For the macro-socioeconomic subset, explainable machine learning indicated that both climatic covariates and development-related proxies (e.g., impervious expansion and water use) were strongly associated with runoff variability. Overall, the results map where rainfall-runoff relationships have shifted globally and quantify the relative importance of socioeconomic covariates, supporting the incorporation of socioeconomic pathways in large-scale hydrologic assessment and water-resource planning.