Adaptive Water Management Research Articles

Water Management Decision Making in the Face of Multiple Forms of Uncertainty and Risk

AbstractIn the Wasatch Range Metropolitan Area of Northern Utah, water management decision makers confront multiple forms of uncertainty and risk. Adapting to these uncertainties and risks is critical for maintaining the long‐term sustainability of the region's water supply. This study draws on interview data to assess the major challenges climatic and social changes pose to Utah's water future, as well as potential solutions. The study identifies the water management adaptation decision‐making space shaped by the interacting institutional, social, economic, political, and biophysical processes that enable and constrain sustainable water management. The study finds water managers and other water actors see challenges related to reallocating water, including equitable water transfers and stakeholder cooperation, addressing population growth, and locating additional water supplies, as more problematic than the challenges posed by climate change. Furthermore, there is significant disagreement between water actors over how to best adapt to both climatic and social changes. This study concludes with a discussion of the path dependencies that present challenges to adaptive water management decision making, as well as opportunities for the pursuit of a new water management paradigm based on soft‐path solutions. Such knowledge is useful for understanding the institutional and social adaptations needed for water management to successfully address future uncertainties and risks.

Identifying and Assessing Robust Water Allocation Plans for Deltas Under Climate Change

Water scarcity threatens economic growth, social cohesion, and environmental sustainability in many deltas. This situation is likely to worsen due to future climate change. To reduce water scarcity and limit salt water intrusion in deltas, many countries have launched policies to allocate water resources. However, it is difficult to develop long-term adaptive water management policies due to large uncertainties. In this paper, we present a Robust Assessment Model for Water Allocation (RAMWA) to support decision making about water release of different key reservoirs under future climate change. The model was applied in the Pearl River basin, China to improve reservoir management, to ensure sufficient flow into the delta to reduce salt intrusion, and to provide sufficient freshwater for human and industrial consumption. Results show that performance of the existing water allocation plans reduces under climate change, as the plans are unable to sustain the required minimum river discharge. However alternatives generated by a Generic Evolutionary Algorithm (GEA) suggest that new plans can be developed which ensure minimum flows into the delta under most future climate change scenarios. The GEA plans perform better than existing plans because rather than following a fixed allocation schedule, the optimal water release for each reservoir is recalculated every 10 days based on observed discharge and storage in key reservoirs.

Climate change and adaptive water management measures in Chtouka Aït Baha region (Morocco)

This study evaluates the effect on the availability of water resources for agriculture of expected future changes in precipitation and temperature distributions in north-western Africa. It also puts forward some locally derived adaptation strategies to climate change that can have a positive impact on water resources in the Chtouka Aït Baha region.Historical baselines of precipitation and temperature were derived using satellite data respectively from CHIRPS and CRU, while future projections of temperature and precipitation were extracted from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment database (CORDEX). Projections were also generated for two future periods (2030–2049 and 2080–2099) under two Representative Concentration Pathways: RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. Regional climate models and satellite data outputs were evaluated by calculating their bias and RMSE against historical baseline and observed data.Under the RCP8.5 scenario, temperature in the region shows an increase by 2°C for the 2030–2049 time period, and by 4 to 5°C towards the end of the 21st century. According to the RCP4.5 scenario, precipitation shows a reduction of 10 to 30% for the period 2030–2049, up to 60% for 2080–2099. Outputs from the climate change projections were used to force the HEC-HMS hydrological model. Simulation results indicate that water deficit at basin level will likely triple towards 2050 due to increase in water demand and decrease in aquifer recharge and dam storage. This alarming situation, in a country that already suffers from water insecurity, emphasizes the need for more efforts to implement climate change adaptation measures. This paper presents an assessment of 38 climate change adaptation measures according to several criteria. The evaluation shows that measures affecting the management of water resources have the highest benefit-to-efforts ratio, which indicates that decision makers and stakeholders should increasingly focus their efforts on management measures.

Applying profile- and catchment-based mathematical models for evaluating the run-off from a Nordic catchment

Abstract Knowledge of hydrological processes and water balance elements are important for climate adaptive water management as well as for introducing mitigation measures aiming to improve surface water quality. Mathematical models have the potential to estimate changes in hydrological processes under changing climatic or land use conditions. These models, indeed, need careful calibration and testing before being applied in decision making. The aim of this study was to compare the capability of five different hydrological models to predict the runoff and the soil water balance elements of a small catchment in Norway. The models were harmonised and calibrated against the same data set. In overall, a good agreement between the measured and simulated runoff was obtained for the different models when integrating the results over a week or longer periods. Model simulations indicate that forest appears to be very important for the water balance in the catchment, and that there is a lack of information on land use specific water balance elements. We concluded that joint application of hydrological models serves as a good background for ensemble modelling of water transport processes within a catchment and can highlight the uncertainty of models forecast.

Linkages with the quantitative assessment of water resources vulnerability: a new approach for adaptive water management under a changing environment

Climate change impact on water resources has been a global hot issue in recent years. In accordance with the latest research progress, a new meaning of water resources vulnerability (WRV) and a concept of adaptive water management have been proposed. For evaluating WRV under the changing environment in the Huai River Basin (HRB), the sixth largest river basin in China, a quantitative assessment model coupling with exposure, droughts risk, sensitivity, and adaptability of water resources system was established. In addition, the adaptive regulation of WRV under five scenarios of water demand control, water efficiency control, pollutant restriction of the water function zone, the minimum water demand control of the ecosystem and integrated control were analyzed in this study. The results indicated that the region with the greatest value of WRV was Xiaoqing River in the benchmark year (2000) and the most unfavorable scenarios in which 33% and 87% of HRB were the extreme vulnerable regions. Among all adaptive regulation scenarios, the most sensitive scenario was the integrated control, followed by the control of water function zone compliance, water use efficiency, water demand and the minimum water demand control of the ecosystem. This study will provide a scientific foundation to integrated water resources management in China.

Climate‐Resilient Outcomes From the International Water & Climate Forum

When international water sector leaders examined climate change impacts and how they're being addressed, it became evident that flexibility, collaboration, communication, and resilience are essential for adaptive water management.

An overview of water reallocation and the barriers to its implementation

The growing number of areas facing water scarcity necessitates adaptive water management strategies beyond traditional water supply and demand management methods, which are becoming increasingly difficult in many regions. Water reallocation offers a flexible water management approach to mitigate water scarcity under changing socioeconomic, climatic, and environmental conditions. In spite of the numerous benefits of reallocating water between users, examples of successful water transfers are relatively sparse and the expected benefits are rarely met in full due to several complex impediments. This study overviews the current body of water reallocation literature, with a particular focus on the key barriers to wider implementation of water reallocation. We argue that to overcome these obstacles a more interdisciplinary approach to water reallocation should be advanced that couples developments in the natural sciences and engineering disciplines with current water reallocation scholarship, which is predominately rooted in the social sciences. Many examples of water transfers from around the world are used to illustrate both the benefits and challenges associated with reallocation, as well as to identify measures to overcome some of the major difficulties. We conclude by calling for an integrated research platform that focuses on supporting both voluntary and nonvoluntary forms of water reallocation; however, a greater emphasis should be on nonmarket means of water transfer since it is more feasible for many regions where water rights are not well defined and institutional capacity is insufficient. WIREs Water 2016, 3:658–677. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1159This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water Human Water > Water Governance Human Water > Water as Imagined and Represented

Analysis of long-term climate change on per capita water demand in urban versus suburban areas in the Portland metropolitan area, USA

We investigated the impacts of long-term climate variability and change on per capita water demand in urban and suburban service areas that have different degrees of development density in the Portland metropolitan area, USA. Together with historical daily weather and water production data, socioeconomic data such as population and unemployment rate were used to estimate daily per capita water demand in the two service areas. The structural time series regression model results show that the sensitivity of per capita water demand to both weather and unemployment rate variables is higher in suburban areas than in urban areas. This is associated with relatively higher proportional demand by the residential sector in the suburban area. The estimated coefficients of the historical demand model were used to project the mid-21st century (2035–2064) per capita water demand under three climate change scenarios that represent high (HadGEM2-ES), medium (MIROC5), and low (GFDL) climate changes. Without climate adaptation, compared to the historical period between 1983 and 2012, per capita water demand is projected to increase by 10.6% in the 2035–2064 period under the HadGEM2-ES in suburban areas, while per capita demand is projected to increase by 4.8% under the same scenario in urban areas. Our findings have implications for future urban water resource management and land use planning in the context of climate variability and change. A tight integration between water resource management and urban planning is needed for preparing for climate adaptation in municipal water planning and management.

Runoff of arid and semi-arid regions simulated and projected by CLM-DTVGM and its multi-scale fluctuations as revealed by EEMD analysis

Runoff is a major component of the water cycle, and its multi-scale fluctuations are important to water resources management across arid and semi-arid regions. This paper coupled the Distributed Time Variant Gain Model (DTVGM) into the Community Land Model (CLM 3.5), replacing the TOPMODEL-based method to simulate runoff in the arid and semi-arid regions of China. The coupled model was calibrated at five gauging stations for the period 1980–2005 and validated for the period 2006–2010. Then, future runoff (2010–2100) was simulated for different Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) emission scenarios. After that, the spatial distributions of the future runoff for these scenarios were discussed, and the multi-scale fluctuation characteristics of the future annual runoff for the RCP scenarios were explored using the Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) analysis method. Finally, the decadal variabilities of the future annual runoff for the entire study area and the five catchments in it were investigated. The results showed that the future annual runoff had slowly decreasing trends for scenarios RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 during the period 2010–2100, whereas it had a non-monotonic trend for the RCP 4.5 scenario, with a slow increase after the 2050s. Additionally, the future annual runoff clearly varied over a decadal time scale, indicating that it had clear divisions between dry and wet periods. The longest dry period was approximately 15 years (2040–2055) for the RCP 2.6 scenario and 25 years (2045–2070) for the RCP 4.5 scenario. However, the RCP 8.5 scenario was predicted to have a long dry period starting from 2045. Under these scenarios, the water resources situation of the study area will be extremely severe. Therefore, adaptive water management measures addressing climate change should be adopted to proactively confront the risks of water resources.

Hydrological Response of East China to the Variation of East Asian Summer Monsoon

The sensitivity of hydrologic variables in East China, that is, runoff, precipitation, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture to the fluctuation of East Asian summer monsoon (EASM), is evaluated by the Mann-Kendall correlation analysis on a spatial resolution of 1/4° in the period of 1952–2012. The results indicate remarkable spatial disparities in the correlation between the hydrologic variables and EASM. The regions in East China susceptible to hydrological change due to EASM fluctuation are identified. When the standardized anomaly of intensity index of EASM (EASMI) is above 1.00, the runoff of Haihe basin has increased by 49% on average, especially in the suburb of Beijing and Hebei province where the runoff has increased up to 105%. In contrast, the runoff in the basins of Haihe and Yellow River has decreased by about 27% and 17%, respectively, when the standardized anomaly of EASMI is below −1.00, which has brought severe drought to the areas since mid-1970s. The study can be beneficial for national or watershed agencies developing adaptive water management strategies in the face of global climate change.

The Adaptiveness of IWRM: Analysing European IWRM research

The Adaptiveness of IWRM provides new insights and knowledge on the challenges and solutions that current water management faces in a situation of complexity and uncertainty. Drawing on the available results from a wide range of European research projects under several framework programmes, the book provides an overview of the state of the art in European research on Integrated Water Resources Management on the topics of Participation, Transboundary regimes, Economics, Vulnerability, Climate change, Advanced monitoring, Spatial planning, and the Social dimensions of water management. The achievements of EU research projects are considered in view of the extent to which IWRM responds to the current complexity and uncertainty water management is facing. These achievements are positioned in a wider context of worldwide developments in the respective topics which account for the future challenges. From this, the book concludes with the required focus of European research in the near future and promotes the concept of Adaptive Water Management as the preferred direction for the development of IWRM. The book presents the achievements of European IWRM research on a range of water management topics and offers conclusions and recommendations for research foci that will be invaluable to water managers, policy-makers and academic researchers working in the field of IWRM.

Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management at the Regional Scale

Adaptation and mitigation measures are important in dealing with climate change impacts on agriculture, forestry and water management. Stakeholders have an important role to play in coping with climate change at the regional scale, so it is important to identify which measures they are aware of and which they have implemented. This paper describes the regional adaptation and mitigation measures taken by stakeholders in northern Germany and the connections between the sectoral measures and the spatial scales involved. The study finds that adaptation measures have either been implemented or chosen at the regional scale; that adaptation plays an important role at the regional scale whilst mitigation measures are almost non-existent; that water-related issues link the land use sectors examined; and that experts clearly view the national level as the appropriate level for policy makers to exert political influence on measures relating to climate change.

Constraints on the Adoption of Adaptive Water Management Principles: the Case of Greater Tehran

Adaptive Water Management (AWM) could provide a sustainable route to address the existing complex problems of urban water management such as continued water shortage and flooding through the future. The AWM application could be a new alternative path in water management especially in developing countries which suffer from common weakening features such as unreliable infrastructure and poor institutional organisations. The AWM distinguishing characteristics such as polycentric governance, organisational flexibility and public participation are considered for feasibility study of the AWM implementation. The paper investigates whether AWM could be applied to a developing-country city in order to deal with future uncertainties of water supply/demand. The required data was collected from the water professionals of Tehran Province Water and Wastewater Company (TPWW Company), which is in charge of water supply and management of 12 million people of the Province. The key elements of AWM performance are transformed to a multi criteria decision model of Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) in order to facilitate quantification of the influence of corresponding qualitative elements derived from semi-structured interviews held in the Company, and for further analysis of urban water managers’ views in a structured way. The research findings show that despite the lack of structural adaptability there are positive attitudes towards inter departmental communication and linking to the external decisive actors such as the Company’s consumers. As a generalising result, the AWM concept would be applicable to the similar developing-country cities particularly located in the Middle-East region while simultaneously promoting technical and institutional performances.

Contribution of rainfall vs. water management to Mediterranean wetland hydrology: Development of an interactive simulation tool to foster adaptation to climate variability

Mediterranean wetlands are increasingly managed to maintain their functions and services following modification in water allocation, embankment and climate change, calling for proactive and adaptive water management. In a first step, we used long-term monitoring of water levels in 37 adjacent embanked marshes in the Camargue as a repeated non-controlled experiment to build a hydrological model. Without information on water input/output by marsh users, we could nevertheless estimate evapotranspiration under flooding and dry conditions, and soil water coefficient. The model provided a high predictive accuracy (adjusted R2 = 0.73–0.83) of monthly water levels when applied to an independent sample of 12 marshes. In a second step we developed an interactive decision-aid tool that allows users to visualize the impact of their management strategy (desired water level at a specific month) on subsequent water levels, and their consequence on different components of the ecosystem over a 10-yr period.

Irrigator and Environmental Water Management Adaptation to Climate Change and Water Reallocation in the Murray–Darling Basin

In an earlier paper (Kirby et al. 2014a), we showed that climate change and a new policy which reallocates water to the environment will impact both the flow of water and the income derived from irrigation in the Murray–Darling Basin. Here, we extend the analysis to consider irrigator and environmental water management strategies to adapt to these new circumstances. Using an integrated hydrology-economics model, we examine a range of strategies and their impact on flows and the gross income of irrigation. We show that the adaptation strategies provide a range of flow and economic outcomes in the Basin. Several strategies offer significant scope to enhance flows without large adverse impacts on the gross income of irrigation overall. Some environmental water management strategies enhance flows in the Murray part of the basin even under the drying influence of a projected median climate change. Irrigator strategies that include carryover of water in storage from one year to the next provide for lesser year to year variability in gross income and may be regarded as more advantageous in providing security against droughts. Flows and the gross income of low value irrigation industries strategies are sensitive to climate change, irrespective of adaptation strategy. Should a projected dry extreme climate change be realized, no strategy can prevent a large reduction in flows and also in gross income, particularly of low value irrigation industries. Nevertheless, environmental water management strategies mitigate the impact on flows, and in some cases may also help mitigate the impacts on gross income. High value irrigation industries are less affected (in terms of gross income, though net income will reduce because of rising water prices) by projected climate change, consistent with observation in the recent long term drought.

Water management and climate change: dealing with uncertainties

This book explores the challenge of adapting water management practices to meet the uncertainty of a changing future climate. Unlike other works on the topic of climate change and water that focus ...

Climatic and human drivers of recent lake-level change in East Juyan Lake, China

Drying of an inland river’s terminal lake in arid regions is an important signal of environmental degradation in downstream regions. A long-term, high-resolution understanding of the lake’s retreat and expansion and the driving mechanisms will inform future adaptive water management strategies, ecosystem restoration, and government decision-making in the context of a growing water scarcity in the inland river basin. The shrubs that grow along the shore of a lake often provide evidence of lake retreat or expansion. The chronological results showed that the earliest germination dates of the lakeshore shrubs, tamarisk, were in 1901, 1943, 1966, 2009, and 1990 from the higher terrace to the lower terrace of East Juyan Lake, a terminal lake of China’s Heihe River. Coupled with river and lake hydrological data, six obvious lake’s fluctuations were identified: shrinkage from 1900 to 1940s and during the early 1990s, expansion and retreat in the late 1950s and early 1970s, continued expansion from 2002 to 2008, and stabilization at a water area of around 40 km2 from 2009 to the present. The water elevation in the 1900s was below 905 m a.s.l., resulting in a water area <80 km2, but decreased to 40 km2 after 1960 and dried up completely by the 1990s. By analysing climatic and hydrological records since 1950, tree-ring climate proxy data, river runoff outside the observation period, and water resource consumption in the middle and lower reaches of the Heihe River, we found that the periodic expansion and retreat of East Juyan Lake was influenced by both climate change and human activities, but especially by human activities. The lake’s recent recovery and stability was achieved by government policy designed to provide environmental flows to the lake.

A Level‐of‐Service Concept for Planning Future Water Supply Projects under Probabilistic Demand and Supply Framework

AbstractOne of the most challenging tasks of water supply utilities is planning the timing and quantity of new water supply sources as demand for water consumption grows. Many water supply utilities target on meeting 100% of their customers' needs based on scenario‐based deterministic demand projections numbers even though there are uncertainties in both supply and demand values. This may result in under or overly conservative approach in assessing future needs. In this article, a level‐of‐service concept is introduced to capture a utility's willingness to accept a given level of risk, plan for it, and invoke a management strategy during extreme events than build a facility to accommodate those in planning for new water supply sources. Accounting for uncertainties in both supply and demand help quantify reliability by achieving a prescribed level of service. The major benefit of such an approach for planning future water supply is that it allows policy makers to evaluate the use of adaptive water management strategies and develop supply in an incremental fashion as demand warrants it. For example, if a given level of service cannot be reliably met with the existing system at a future time t, an incremental water supply project would come online to bring the required reliability level up but no more.

Impacts of climate change on agricultural water management: a review

This study provides an overview on the impacts of climate change on agricultural water management, including agricultural water requirement, water availability and water quality, and the transition of those impacts to crop yield, agricultural land suitability and livestock production systems, considering both long‐term trends of climate and extreme climatic events. A synthesis of findings from local, regional, and global studies guides this article's discussion of scientifically based information, implications for managing the risk of water scarcity and food insecurity, and future research. Negative and positive climate change impacts occurring at the local scale may counteract each other at the global scale (e.g., those on irrigation requirement and arable land availability); the impacts from the various factors can be counter‐balanced too (e.g.,CO2and water deficit impact on crop yield). Meanwhile, the shocks at the local and regional levels have been or will be caused by water quantity and quality problems and are pressing concerns for decision making. Although uncertainty in climate change predictions remains a critical issue for decision making, certain knowledge about the impact on crop production has been obtained from historical data. Finally, future research needs to focus on gaining a more detailed understanding of climate change (especially extreme events), climate change impacts, both natural and social response mechanisms, and adaptation measures of agricultural water management. More focus should be laid on improving impact assessment via the various methods such as retrospective analysis, monitoring, prediction, and strategic risk management. Moreover, planned adaptations in agricultural water management will be needed to facilitate more consistent and more effective responses to climate change, with consideration of the linkage with nonagricultural water uses.WIREs Water2015, 2:439–455. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1089This article is categorized under:Engineering Water &gt; Planning WaterScience of Water &gt; Water and Environmental Change

Adaptation of water and nitrogen management to future climates for sustaining potato yield in Minnesota: Field and simulation study

The present study focuses on (i) evaluation of potato crop yield under present time slice (PTS) with recommended management of nitrogen (N) fertilizer and irrigation on sandy soils of Minnesota, USA (ii) simulation of potato productivity and nitrate leaching with the SUBSTOR DSSAT-potato model in a projected future climatic environment (2038–2067) and (iii) evaluation of alternative irrigation and N management strategies with the DSSAT model as adaptation measures to minimize climate change impacts. Ensemble global climate model output for each of three future mid-century (MC) 10-years time slices of crop growing season predicts increases in maximum temperature (Tmax) of 0.7, 1.2 and 2.1°C; and in minimum temperature (Tmin) of 0.6, 1.3 and 2.0°C in MC1 (2038–2047), MC2 (2048–2057) and MC3 (2058–2067), respectively, during the tuber bulking periods. Rainfall (RF) of 253.1mm in PTS decreased by 29.7, 16.7 and 6.5mm in MC1–MC3, respectively. Under the changed climate, simulations indicated decreases in potato yields of 19–29%, harvest index of 4–9% and water use efficiency of 22–32% compared with current irrigation and fertilizer rates (260mm irrigation, 270kgha−1 N fertilizer). Potato yields could be sustained at present levels by increasing irrigation levels to 390mm, with 450kgha−1 N in the years 2038–2047; and 326 and 390mm irrigation with 450kgNha−1 in year 2048–2057. However, leaching losses in 2048–2057 would increase (relative to current losses) by 34–62%. In the years 2058–2067 yield in the region evaluated can no longer be sustained with increased N and irrigation levels and leaching losses would increase by 41–67%. Use of varieties tolerant to drought and heat or adapting alternative cultural practices will be required to maintain productivity.