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Water use in River Basins

This version was saved 14 years, 9 months ago View current version     Page history
Saved by Maya Rajasekharan
on June 25, 2009 at 2:34:31 pm
 

Water Use Accounting for the Basins of Mekong, Karkheh, Volta, Limpopo, Nile, Niger, Yellow River, Sao Francisco, Indus and Ganges

The Challenge Program on Water and Food undertakes research to maximize water productivity in several of the world’s major river basins. The research must be underpinned by information on how much water there is in a basin, where it goes and how it is used. There should, furthermore, be an understanding of future constraints (such as the impact of climate change), opportunities (such as increased diversions for irrigation), and trade-offs (such as changed land use improving dryland productivity but leaving less water for downstream use).

Through a series of 12 working papers [in press], Mac Kirby from CSIRO and his collegues describe the underlying concepts of water use accounts that provide monthly estimates of major water uses in a river basin. They have used them for historical estimates, and for prediction. Starting with rainfall (and in some basins snow), the accounts track the partitioning of water into runoff, and evapotranspiration by dryland vegetation. The runoff is tracked as it becomes flow down the rivers, with losses (such as evaporation and seepage) and gains (such as tributary inflows), storages in lakes and reservoirs, diversion for irrigation or other purposes, floods in lowland floodplains, and finally discharges to the sea. The account estimates the water use by the major irrigation industries and other uses. The account helps develop understanding of the water uses in a basin, and the likely consequences of large changes, such as climate change, land-use change, increased diversions and irrigation water use, and changed storages.

The water use accounts are developed as Excel spreadsheets. They are a tool for integrated water-resources management, and provide a sound basis for integrating hydrology, environment, social and economic issues, and policy and institutional issues in a river basin.

Please contact us or Mac Kirby for further information and for the spreadsheets. 

The twelve papers in the Series Water-use Accounts in the CPWF Basins are:

  1. Model concepts and description
  2. Simple water-use accounting of the Ganges Basin
  3. Simple water-use accounting of the Indus Basin
  4. Simple water-use accounting of the Karkheh Basin
  5. Simple water-use accounting of the Limpopo Basin
  6. Simple water-use accounting of the Mekong Basin
  7. Simple water-use accounting of the Niger Basin
  8. Simple water-use accounting of the Nile Basin
  9. Simple water-use accounting of the São Francisco Basin
  10. Simple water-use accounting of the Volta Basin
  11. Simple water-use accounting of the Yellow River Basin
  12. Spreadsheet description and use

These papers are currently in the final stages of publication as CPWF working papers.

 

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