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Abstract
Reducing water scarcity requires both mitigation of the increasing water pollution and adaptation to the changing availability and demand of water resources under global change. However, state-of-the-art water scarcity modeling efforts often ignore water quality and associated biogeochemical processes in the design of water scarcity reduction measures. Here, we identify cost-effective options for reducing future water scarcity by accounting for water quantity and quality in the highly water stressed and polluted Pearl River Basin in China under various socio-economic and climatic change scenarios based on the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). Our modeling approach integrates a nutrient model (MARINA-Nutrients) with a cost-optimization procedure, considering biogeochemistry and human activities on land in a spatially explicit way. Results indicate that future water scarcity is expected to increase by a factor of four in most parts of the Pearl River Basin by 2050 under the RCP8.5-SSP5 scenario. Results also show that water quality management options could half future water scarcity in a cost-effective way. Our analysis could serve as an example of water scarcity assessment for other highly water stressed and polluted river basins around the world and inform the design of cost-effective measures to reduce water scarcity.
Highlights
Assessments of water scarcity management focuses mostly on water quantity and overlook water quality[5,14]
Future annual and seasonal water scarcity Water scarcity in the Pearl River Basin is expected to increase by a factor of 4 by 2050 compared to 2010 (Fig. 1c, d)
The river discharge of the whole Pearl River Basin is projected to increase by 4% for RCP8.5 between 2010 and 2050
Summary
Assessments of water scarcity management focuses mostly on water quantity and overlook water quality[5,14]. This paper presents an integrated modeling approach combining biophysical (i.e., MARINA-Nutrients model (version 2.0) for river export of total dissolved N) and economic (i.e., water scarcity cost optimization) modeling at the river basin scale to identify costeffective combinations of management options for reducing river export of total dissolved N (TDN) and improving water supply to reduce water scarcity, while accounting for climate and socioeconomic changes and sub-basin characteristics (e.g., urbanization, land use) This integrated modeling approach is built on the approach of Strokal et al.[18], but extended to water scarcity including options for water quality and quantity management and accounting for biogeochemical interactions between them. This integrated modeling approach is applied to the Pearl River Basin, a highly water stressed and polluted basin in China, which is experiencing rapid climate and socio-economic changes
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