Abstract
South Korea endured extreme drought through 2015 and 2016. This hydrological drought led to a socio-economic drought which is a restriction on stream water use. Previous studies have explored streamflow drought using a threshold level based on flow duration curves, but streamflow drought does not necessarily lead to stream water deficit, which is related to water demand. Therefore, this study introduced a threshold for stream water deficit in South Korea, which is termed as river management flow, and was applied to Geum River Basin where a severe drought recently occurred. The stream water coordination council has restricted the use of stream water to cope with the stream water deficit. The deficit characteristics for the upstream and downstream river management flow should be similar in order to ensure the feasibility of stream water restrictions. Thus, upstream and downstream river management flows, which reproduced similar deficit characteristics to those of the reference site, were estimated. The deficit characteristics of Bugang and Gyuam were estimated from their river management flows for the 2015 drought and were comparable to those of Gongju. We expect this study to minimize the conflict between upstream and downstream water users in future.
Highlights
Hydrological drought is defined as a significant decrease in the availability of water in all its forms appearing in the land phase of the hydrological cycle [1]
South Korea has been responding to stream water deficit (SWD) using a RMF based on the River Law
Because stream water use (SWU) in South Korea has been managed by standard watershed units, the RMF has been estimated based on standard watershed units
Summary
Hydrological drought is defined as a significant decrease in the availability of water in all its forms appearing in the land phase of the hydrological cycle [1]. To secure validity of adjusting the stream water coordination has the the reliability authority and to adjust upstreamSWU, and the should be managed equitably via RMF to reproduce similar deficit upstream and downstream to cope with SWD. It is necessary utilize RMFs at other sites because of downstream Their spatial the SWD should managed equitably via RMF to to reproduce similar deficit upstream and limit. The RMFs were calculated based on permission for the stream water in a standard watershed, and the upstream and downstream flows, which have use of stream water in a standard watershed, and the upstream and downstream flows, which have characteristics similar to to expanding thethe at the observation site characteristics similar to tothose thoseofofSWDs, SWDs,were wereapplied applied expanding at the observation corresponding to the outlet of the standard watershed.
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