Estimating the performance of international regulatory regimes: Methodology and empirical application to international water management in the Naryn/Syr Darya basin

Siegfried, Tobias; Bernauer, Thomas

doi:10.1029/2006wr005738

Cited by 31 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(46 reference statements)

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“…They are: 1 Toktogul, 2 Kambarata I, 3 Kambarata II (planned), 4 Andijan, 5 Charvak, 6 Kayrakum and 7 Chardara. Red lines are country borders and energy allocation have thus far failed (Siegfried and Bernauer 2007). Moreover, large new dam projects in Kyrgyzstan (Kambarata I and II) and Tajikistan (Rogun) are provoking hostile reactions from downstream Uzbekistan where it appears that a growing number of agricultural communities are affected by falling income in agriculture due to deteriorating water supply and drainage systems and land degradation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Will climate change exacerbate water stress in Central Asia?

et al. 2011

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Millions of people in the geopolitically important region of Central Asia depend on water from snow-and glacier-melt driven international rivers, most of all the Syr Darya and Amu Darya. The riparian countries of these rivers have Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (882 Climatic Change (2012) 112:881-899experienced recurring water allocation conflicts ever since the Soviet Union collapsed. Will climate change exacerbate water stress and thus conflicts? We have developed a coupled climate, land-ice and rainfall-runoff model for the Syr Darya to quantify impacts and show that climatic changes are likely to have consequences on runoff seasonality due to earlier snow-melt. This will increase water stress in unregulated catchments because less water will be available for irrigation in the summer months. Threats from geohazards, above all glacier lake outbursts, are likely to increase as well. The area at highest risk is the densely populated, agriculturally productive, and politically unstable Fergana Valley. Targeted infrastructural developments will be required in the region. If the current mismanagement of water and energy resources can be replaced with more effective resource allocation mechanisms through the strengthening of transboundary institutions, Central Asia will be able to successfully address these future climate-related challenges.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Will climate change exacerbate water stress in Central Asia?

et al. 2011

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“…Total irrigated area in the Aral Sea basin increased from 5 million hectares in 1965 to 7.9 million hectares in 2000 (Micklin, 2007). About 1.7 million hectares are currently irrigated directly from the Syr Darya River (Siegfried et al, 2007). Cotton is an important source of foreign exchange in Uzbekistan, and continued production through irrigated agriculture is a priority for the government (World Bank, 2004).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Kyrgyzstan had been supplied with fossil fuels under the Soviet system but found itself in the position of having to purchase energy supplies on world markets after 1991. Kyrgyzstan turned to hydropower for its own energy needs, which peak in winter because of heating demands, placing the country's operational objectives in direct opposition to those of its downstream neighbors; Kyrgyzstan would prefer to store summer peak flows for winter power generation, while the downstream countries would like winter releases minimized to conserve water for the summer season (Biddison, 2002;World Bank, 2004;Siegfried et al, 2007). Increased winter releases also cause flooding, as many of the downstream irrigation works are not built to handle high flows and ice in the river bed reduces winter conveyance capacity (Biddison, 2002).…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-time remote sensing driven river basin modeling using radar altimetry

Pereira-Cardenal

Riegels

Berry

et al. 2011

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Many river basins have a weak in-situ hydrometeorological monitoring infrastructure. However, water resources practitioners depend on reliable hydrological models for management purposes. Remote sensing (RS) data have been recognized as an alternative to in-situ hydrometeorological data in remote and poorly monitored areas and are increasingly used to force, calibrate, and update hydrological models.In this study, we evaluate the potential of informing a river basin model with real-time radar altimetry measurements over reservoirs. We present a lumped, conceptual, river basin water balance modeling approach based entirely on RS and reanalysis data: precipitation was obtained from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA), temperature from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast's (ECMWF) Operational Surface Analysis dataset and reference evapotranspiration was derived from temperature data. The Ensemble Kalman Filter was used to assimilate radar altimetry (ERS2 and Envisat) measurements of reservoir water levels. The modeling approach was applied to the Syr Darya River Basin, a snowmelt-dominated basin with large topographical variability, several large reservoirs and scarce hydrometeorological data that is located in Central Asia and shared between 4 countries with conflicting water management interests.Correspondence to: P. Bauer-Gottwein (pbau@env.dtu.dk)The modeling approach was tested over a historical period for which in-situ reservoir water levels were available. Assimilation of radar altimetry data significantly improved the performance of the hydrological model. Without assimilation of radar altimetry data, model performance was limited, probably because of the size and complexity of the model domain, simplifications inherent in model design, and the uncertainty of RS and reanalysis data. Altimetry data assimilation reduced the mean absolute error of the simulated reservoir water levels from 4.7 to 1.9 m, and overall model RMSE from 10.3 m to 6.7 m. Model performance was variable for the different reservoirs in the system. The RMSE ranged from 10% to 76% of the mean seasonal reservoir level variation.Because of its easy accessibility and immediate availability, radar altimetry lends itself to being used in real-time hydrological applications. As an impartial source of information about the hydrological system that can be updated in real time, the modeling approach described here can provide useful medium-term hydrological forecasts to be used in water resources management.

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“…The region strongly depends on water resources from mountain catchments for irrigation, hydropower generation and for water inflow to the Aral Sea (e.g. Siegfried and Bernauer, 2007). The question of possible climate change effects on water availability therefore is highly relevant in this area and there is a demand in setting up hydrological models for approaching this task.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of areal precipitation estimates based on downscaled reanalysis and station data by hydrological modelling

Duethmann

Zimmer

Gafurov

et al. 2013

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. In data sparse mountainous regions it is difficult to derive areal precipitation estimates. In addition, their evaluation by cross validation can be misleading if the precipitation gauges are not in representative locations in the catchment. This study aims at the evaluation of precipitation estimates in data sparse mountainous catchments. In particular, it is first tested whether monthly precipitation fields from downscaled reanalysis data can be used for interpolating gauge observations. Secondly, precipitation estimates from this and other methods are evaluated by comparing simulated and observed discharge, which has the advantage that the data are evaluated at the catchment scale. This approach is extended here in order to differentiate between errors in the overall bias and the temporal dynamics, and by taking into account different sources of uncertainties. The study area includes six headwater catchments of the Karadarya Basin in Central Asia. Generally the precipitation estimate based on monthly precipitation fields from downscaled reanalysis data showed an acceptable performance, comparable to another interpolation method using monthly precipitation fields from multi-linear regression against topographical variables. Poor performance was observed in only one catchment, probably due to mountain ridges not resolved in the model orography of the regional climate model. Using two performance criteria for the evaluation by hydrological modelling allowed a more informed differentiation between the precipitation data and showed that the precipitation data sets mostly differed in their overall bias, while the performance with respect to the temporal dynamics was similar. Our precipitation estimates in these catchments are considerably higher than those from continental-or global-scale gridded data sets. The study demonstrates large uncertainties in areal precipitation estimates in these data sparse mountainous catchments. In such regions with only very few precipitation gauges but high spatial variability of precipitation, important information for evaluating precipitation estimates may be gained by hydrological modelling and a comparison to observed discharge.

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Estimating the performance of international regulatory regimes: Methodology and empirical application to international water management in the Naryn/Syr Darya basin

Cited by 31 publications

References 30 publications

Will climate change exacerbate water stress in Central Asia?

Will climate change exacerbate water stress in Central Asia?

Real-time remote sensing driven river basin modeling using radar altimetry

Evaluation of areal precipitation estimates based on downscaled reanalysis and station data by hydrological modelling

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