Environmental flow assessment, evaluation, and suggestions for dying riverine ecosystem of the transboundary Amudarya River, Central Asia

Abstract

The Amudarya River (ADR) is the largest source of freshwater in Central Asia providing livelihood to millions of people by extracting water for agriculture. However, the over-exploitation has created some critical environmental issues. For example, almost no water for the delta and the Aral Sea, which was once the 4th largest lake in the world. The present study focused on the assessment of environmental flow requirements (E-flows) in the basin. However, the main challenges in the accomplishment were the unavailability of natural streamflow, which is necessary for E-flow assessment, and sparse and limited hydroclimatic data. A hydrologic model was configured to simulate naturalized streamflow using the meteorological data from the Climate Research Unit. Four hydrological methods (i.e., Tennant, low flow index (7Q10), flow duration curve analysis (Q90, and Q95), and flow duration curve shifting (FDCS)) and all-method mean were applied to estimate E-flows at 34 sites on all tributaries of the ADR. According to FDCS, 7Q10, Q90, and Q95, E-flows should be 46%, 37%, 30%, and 25% of naturalized mean annual flow (NMAF), respectively, and on average, it should be 35% of NMAF, assessed by the all-methods mean. For low-flow (October–March) and high-flow (April–September) months, E-flows were determined to be 20–30% and 40–98% of NMAF, respectively. E-flow evaluation with the current environmental conditions showed very serious concerns because no sites met the environmental flow requirements below Kerki. This study will be guidelines to improve the riverine ecosystem and for future sustainable development in the region.