Integrated hydrological modelling of small- and medium-sized water storages with application to the upper Fengman Reservoir Basin of China

Zhang, C.; Peng, Yong; Chu, Jianhua; Shoemaker, Christine A.; Zhang, A.

doi:10.5194/hess-16-4033-2012

Cited by 25 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…The aggregate representation leads to obtaining a simulation of the hydrological cumulative impacts of reservoirs at the catchment, grid-cell or sub-catchment outlet but intrinsically does not allow simulating the cumulative impacts along the river network from the head to the outlet, unless the sub-catchments are small, which is often not the case because the size of the sub-catchment is often determined by the availability of river gauges. Furthermore, this representation may not reflect the different responses of the various reservoirs in terms of key processes (evaporation, infiltration, operations, and so forth (Zhang et al, 2012)).…”

Section: Aggregate Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It also relies on the assumption that reservoir connectivity may play a role in the cumulative impacts. The reservoir network is represented by classes of reservoirs determined following reservoir water capacity (Güntner et al, 2004;Nathan et al, 2005;Lowe et al, 2005)) and also reservoir drainage area (Zhang et al, 2012). Each class is represented as a single equivalent reservoir.…”

Section: Statistical Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Global indicators, as we investigated in this review, are also a way to overcome a lack of or uncertainty in information about the key characteristics of small reservoirs. However, the development of remote sensing methods and image analysis techniques should help in the future to map and quantify the properties over vast areas while reducing the uncertainties (Zhang et al, 2012). Following this approach, remote sensing may also be a way to derive height-surface area-volume relations (Mialhe et al, 2008).…”

Section: Improving Knowledge Of Small Reservoir Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The cumulative impacts of small reservoirs on hydrology: A review

Habets

Molénat

Carluer

et al. 2018

Science of The Total Environment

112

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The number of small reservoirs has increased due to their reduced cost, the availability of many favourable locations, and their easy access due to proximity. The cumulative impacts of such small reservoirs are not easy to estimate, even when solely considering hydrology, which is partially due to the difficulty in collecting data on the functioning of such reservoirs. However, there is evidence indicating that the cumulative impacts of such reservoirs are significant. The aim of this article is to present a review of the studies that address the cumulative impacts of small reservoirs on hydrology, focusing on the methodology and on the way in which these impacts are assessed. Most of the studies addressing the hydrological cumulative impacts focused on the annual stream discharge, with decreases ranging from 0.2% to 36% with a mean value of 13.4% ± 8% over approximately 30 references. However, it is shown that similar densities of small reservoirs can lead to different impacts on stream discharge in different regions. This result is probably due to the hydro-climatic conditions and makes defining simple indicators to provide a first guess of the cumulative impacts difficult. The impacts also vary in time, with a more intense reduction in the river discharge during the dry years than during the wet years. This finding is certainly an important point to take into consideration in the context of climate change. Two methods are mostly used to estimate cumulative impacts: i) exclusively data-based methods and ii) models. The assumptions, interests and shortcomings of these methods are presented. Scientific tracks are proposed to address the four main shortcomings, namely the estimation of the associated uncertainties, the lack of knowledge on reservoir characteristics and water abstraction and the accuracy of the impact indicators.

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Section: Aggregate Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Statistical Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Improving Knowledge Of Small Reservoir Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The cumulative impacts of small reservoirs on hydrology: A review

Habets

Molénat

Carluer

et al. 2018

Science of The Total Environment

112

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“…The eco-hydrological model SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) has been widely used for hydrological simulation in watersheds, and it has obtained good results for application in dryland regions [31][32][33][34][35][36]. Despite this, even complex models such as SWAT need adjustments to modeling small reservoirs, since the large number of them usually have limitations to be implemented in the models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Dense Networks of Reservoirs on Streamflows at Dryland Catchments

et al. 2022

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Small reservoirs play an important role in providing water to rural communities. Increased construction of small reservoirs to mitigate the effects of droughts leads to a High-density Reservoirs Network (HdRN) of small reservoirs, which can potentially modify the streamflows both in dry and wet periods. However, there is a lack of understanding of the interannual behavior of flow retention and the impact of future increases in the number of small reservoirs, mainly for HdRN in dryland catchments. This research aims to determine the possible impact of the increase in the number of small reservoirs on dry hydrological networks, evaluating the annual flows generated at the outlet of a dryland watershed for scenarios with different densities of small reservoirs (number of reservoirs per area). The study area was the Conceição river catchment (3347 km²) in the semiarid of Brazil. The hydrological model of the study area was developed in SWAT. The model obtained appropriate results for daily streamflows, with values of 0.63, 0.81, and 0.53% for NSE, KGE, and PBIAS, respectively. The current density of small reservoirs in the region was estimated at 0.068 reservoirs per square kilometer (res/km²). Eight expansion scenarios were defined for densities between 0.1 res/km² and 3.0 res/km². The results showed that the influence of the HdRN on runoff reduction mostly occurs for a probability of exceedance between 1% and 10% of month flows and is very small for months with very high peaks of flow. The reduction in the outlet flow due to the increase in the number of small reservoirs was stronger during dry years (up to 30%) than during wet years (up to 8%), and it tended to increase in years with a consecutive lack of rain (from about 7% in the first year to about 20% in the last year and in the worst scenario), which may intensify the period of extended droughts. This research provides insights about the impact of the increase in the number of small reservoirs on the interannual variability of flow retention, and the understanding of the influence of small reservoirs on runoff reduction may help water resources agencies better prepare for hydrologic extremes (droughts and floods).

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“…In West Africa, the construction of reservoirs is found to be a sound strategy in assisting people to adapt to climate change, to increase water storage capacities, regulate water flows, contribute to food security, increase livelihood resilience, and maintain or/and improve wetland ecosystem functions and services [ 4 , [6] , [7] , [8] ]. Water storage is an important tool for resilience [ 9 ] but reservoirs as an important human activity also affect runoff [ 10 ], environment, public health [ 11 ] and lead to water loss by evaporation [ [12] , [13] , [14] ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%