Abstract
Abstract. The paper demonstrates the application of a new water accounting plus (WA+) framework to produce information on depletion of water resources, storage change, and land and water productivity in the Indus basin. It shows how satellite-derived estimates of land use, rainfall, evaporation (E), transpiration (T), interception (I) and biomass production can be used in addition to measured basin outflow, for water accounting with WA+. It is demonstrated how the accounting results can be interpreted to identify existing issues and examine solutions for the future. The results for one selected year (2007) showed that total annual water depletion in the basin (501 km3) plus outflows (21 km3) exceeded total precipitation (482 km3). The water storage systems that were effected are groundwater storage (30 km3), surface water storage (9 km3), and glaciers and snow storage (2 km3). Evapotranspiration of rainfall or "landscape ET" was 344 km3 (69 % of total depletion). "Incremental ET" due to utilized flow was 157 km3 (31% of total depletion). Agriculture depleted 297 km3, or 59% of the total depletion, of which 85% (254 km3) was through irrigated agriculture and the remaining 15% (44 km3) through rainfed systems. Due to excessive soil evaporation in agricultural areas, half of all water depletion in the basin was non-beneficial. Based on the results of this accounting exercise loss of storage, low beneficial depletion, and low land and water productivity were identified as the main water resources management issues. Future scenarios to address these issues were chosen and their impacts on the Indus Basin water accounts were tested using the new WA+ framework.
Highlights
The aim of water accounting is to track inflows and outflows, assets, liabilities, stocks and reserves for a particular area over a period of time
Using the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and standard error of estimates (SEE) they concluded that calibration with the geographical differential analysis (GDA) method resulted in a closer correlation with rain gauge data than a simple regression equation
It is important to note that the above analyses are only based on results of water accounting in one year (2007) and are merely to demonstrate how the WA+ functions in scenario development and assessment
Summary
The aim of water accounting is to track inflows and outflows, assets, liabilities, stocks and reserves for a particular area over a period of time. Availability of data on water flows and consumption is a major constraint for reliable accounting in river basins worldwide. For this reason, data intensive water accounting frameworks such as the United Nations System for Environmental and Economic Accounting for Water (SEEAW) (UN, 2007), which tracks water withdrawal by different sectors, are not commonly implemented (Karimi et al, 2012). Besides the unsustainable use of groundwater, the other major challenges that the basin faces include the increasing gap between supply and demand, water logging in poorly drained areas, climate change impacts, environmental degradation, soil salinization, and above all, politica2l9disagreements among riparian countries (Qureshi, 2011)
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