ORIGINAL ARTICLE Hydrologic response characteristics of a tropical catchment to land use changes: a case study of The Nerus catchment Mohd Hafifi Mat Nazir • Wan Nor Azmin Sulaiman • Hafizan Juahir Received: 10 March 2014 / Accepted: 25 November 2014 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract Hydrologic response of a catchment with the most common expression through runoff coefficient reflects a complex response of interaction between the rainfall and catchment physical properties. In this study, an attempt has been made through the mean rainfall–runoff polygon method to explore the impact of land use change on the mean monthly runoff coefficient estimated from 27 years of the hydrology and land use records of a tropical catchment located in the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Specifically, the land use and flow records are divided into three intervals: (1982–1990), (1992–2000) and (2002–2010). The mean monthly rainfall–runoff polygon plotted is rendered to the three time intervals. The results have shown that contrasting shapes were computed which demonstrate the significant variability in the rainfall–runoff response characteristics under the linkage of land use changes. Ample information describing the hydrological responses of the study area has been attained through the quantitative approaches. The study has concluded that the rainfall–runoff polygon method can be used as a simple alternative method for assessing the impact of land use changes on the hydrological response. Keywords Rainfall–runoff polygon  Mean monthly runoff coefficient  Hydrological response  Land use changes  Tropical catchment Introduction Since 1980, there has been an extensive alteration of land use in the Nerus catchment area predominantly for agri- cultural activities affecting the natural hydrological com- ponents, such as surface runoff. In a hydrological study, surface runoff is a part of hydrological components gen- erated from a complex relationship between the rainfall, runoff, climatic disparity and land use pattern. In fact, land use changes act as a key in controlling the hydrological response (Li et al. 2007; Fohrer et al. 2001) in many ways, at all watersheds under different climates (Siriwardena et al. 2006; Costa et al. 2003; Niehoff et al. 2002). The characteristic of the surface runoff over the entire catch- ment is a popular hydrological component to measure the impact of land use changes (Tran and O’Neill 2013Coutu and Vega 2007; Shi et al. 2002). In hydrological studies, the rainfall that appears as runoff on the surface of the catchment is known as the runoff coefficient (Linsley et al. 1975). Over the decade, the runoff coefficient is one of the most significant and fundamental hydrological terms of the rainfall–runoff non-linear relationship and acts as an important role in the designing of engineering such as reservoirs (dams), culverts, groundwater recharge estima- tion and flood control assessment used runoff coefficient as the significant input variables (MASMA, DID, Malaysia 2000). The runoff coefficient value, C, is the expression derived from the response of the factors affecting the relationship of the peak flow to the average rainfall inten- sity together with the area and response time (Ven te Chow et al. 1988). There are many studies on the determination of the runoff coefficient especially to improve the peak dis- charge estimation or particularly in the Rational Method and Soil Conservation Services-Curve Number (SCS-CN 1986). The runoff coefficient in water resources design M. H. Mat Nazir (&)  W. N. A. Sulaiman Faculty of Environmental Studies, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia e-mail: hafifinazir@gmail.com H. Juahir East Coast Environmental Research Institute (ESERI), Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Gong Badak, Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia 123 Environ Earth Sci DOI 10.1007/s12665-014-3925-y