Climate change and environmental water reallocation in the Murray–Darling Basin: Impacts on flows, diversions and economic returns to irrigation

Kirby, J. M.; Connor, Jeffery D.; Ahmad, Mobin-ud-Din; Gao, Lei; Mainuddin, Mohammed

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.01.024

Cited by 63 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…In some arid and semiarid regions, climate change is projected to lead to reduced inflows to surface water reservoirs that have traditionally been the main sources of city water supply [1][2][3][4]. Municipal water utilities typically face requirements to ensure that customer water demand is satisfied with a prescribed reliability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Economics of Groundwater Replenishment for Reliable Urban Water Supply

Gao

Connor

Dillon

2014

Water

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This paper explores the potential economic benefits of water banking in aquifers to meet drought and emergency supplies for cities where the population is growing and changing climate has reduced the availability of water. A simplified case study based on the city of Perth, Australia was used to estimate the savings that could be achieved by water banking. Scenarios for investment in seawater desalination plants and groundwater replenishment were considered over a 20 year period of growing demand, using a Monte Carlo analysis that embedded the Markov model. An optimisation algorithm identified the minimum cost solutions that met specified criteria for supply reliability. The impact of depreciation of recharge credits was explored. The results revealed savings of more than A$1B (~US$1B) or 37% to 33% of supply augmentation costs by including water banking in aquifers for 95% and 99.5% reliability of supply respectively. When the hypothetically assumed recharge credit depreciation rate was increased from 1% p.a. to 10% p.a. savings were still 33% to 31% for the same reliabilities. These preliminary results show that water banking in aquifers has potential to offer a highly attractive solution for efficiently increasing the security of urban water supplies where aquifers are suitable.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Economics of Groundwater Replenishment for Reliable Urban Water Supply

Gao

Connor

Dillon

2014

Water

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“…The Dynamic Water Balance Model has been applied in several basins around the world (Kaune et al, 2015;Kirby et al, 2014;Tekleab et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2008), showing reliable river discharge simulations at monthly time scale. The model has a 5 simple structure without routing, simulating the basin hydrological processes with a reduced number of parameters.…”

Section: Hydrological Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Solid information on climate variability and climate change are key to adequately estimate the availability of water for human livelihoods, the environment and agricultural development (Kirby et al, 2014(Kirby et al, , 2015, especially for irrigated agriculture, which by volume is the largest user of freshwater (de Fraiture and Wichelns, 2010). Available climatological records used for estimation of water resources availability in the irrigation sector are, however, often short , and may not be representative of the full distribution of climate variability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can global precipitation datasets benefit the estimation of the area to be cropped in irrigated agriculture?

Kaune¹,

Werner²,

López³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. The area to be cropped in irrigation districts needs to be planned according to the available water resources to avoid agricultural production loss. However, the period of record of local hydro-meteorological data may be short, leading to an incomplete understanding of climate variability and consequent uncertainty in estimating surface water availability for irrigation area planning. In this study we assess the benefit of using global precipitation datasets to improve surface water availability estimates. A reference area that can be irrigated is established using a complete record of thirty years of observed 15 river discharge data. Areas are then determined using simulated river discharges from six local hydrological models forced with in-situ and global precipitation datasets (CHIRPS and MSWEP), each calibrated independently with a sample of five years extracted from the full thirty year record. The utility of establishing the irrigated area based on simulated river discharge simulations is compared against the reference area through a pooled Relative Utility Value. Results show that for all river discharge simulations the benefit of choosing the irrigated area based on the thirty years simulated data is higher compared to 20 using only five years observed discharge data, as the statistical spread of using thirty years is smaller. Hence, it is more beneficial to calibrate a hydrological model using five years of observed river discharge and then extending it with global precipitation data of thirty years as this weighs up against the model uncertainty of the model calibration.

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“…Also, climate change could have considerable impacts on irrigation requirements (Döll, 2002;Woznicki et al, 2015), which should be accounted for in prospective water balance assessments. Some studies have focused only on water demand (e.g., Grouillet et al, 2015), on fulfilling environmental flow requirements (e.g., Donley et al, 2012), or on the tradeoffs between environmental flow requirements and one type of demand (e.g., Kirby et al, 2014). Wanders and Wada (2015) considered human influence in projections of future drought at a global scale; however, they did not consider possible future changes in water use.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability of water uses in managed hydrosystems: human- and climate-induced changes for the mid-21st century

Fabre

Ruelland

Dezetter

et al. 2016

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. This paper assesses the sustainability of planned water uses in mesoscale river basins under multiple climate change scenarios, and contributes to determining the possible causes of unsustainability. We propose an assessment grounded in real-world water management issues, with water management scenarios built in collaboration with local water agencies. Furthermore, we present an analysis through indicators that relate to management goals and present the implications of climate uncertainty for our results, furthering the significance of our study for water management. A modeling framework integrating hydro-climatic and human dynamics and accounting for interactions between resource and demand was applied in two basins of different scales and with contrasting water uses: the Herault (2500 km 2 , France) and the Ebro (85 000 km 2 , Spain) basins. Natural streamflow was evaluated using a conceptual hydrological model. A demanddriven reservoir management model was designed to account for streamflow regulations from the main dams. Human water demand was estimated from time series of demographic, socioeconomic and climatic data. Environmental flows were accounted for by defining streamflow thresholds under which withdrawals were strictly limited. Finally indicators comparing water availability to demand at strategic resource and demand nodes were computed. This framework was applied under different combinations of climatic and water use scenarios for the mid-21st to differentiate the impacts of climateand human-induced changes on streamflow and water balance. Results showed that objective monthly environmental flows would be guaranteed in current climate conditions in both basins, yet in several areas this could imply limiting human water uses more than once every 5 years. The impact of the tested climate projections on both water availability and demand could question the water allocations and environmental requirements currently planned for the coming decades. Water shortages for human use could become more frequent and intense, and the pressure on water resources and aquatic ecosystems could intensify. The causes of unsustainability vary across sub-basins and scenarios, and in most areas results are highly dependent on the climate change scenario.

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Climate change and environmental water reallocation in the Murray–Darling Basin: Impacts on flows, diversions and economic returns to irrigation

Cited by 63 publications

References 13 publications

The Economics of Groundwater Replenishment for Reliable Urban Water Supply

The Economics of Groundwater Replenishment for Reliable Urban Water Supply

Can global precipitation datasets benefit the estimation of the area to be cropped in irrigated agriculture?

Sustainability of water uses in managed hydrosystems: human- and climate-induced changes for the mid-21st century

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