Systems Analysis of Coupled Natural and Human Processes in the Mekong River Basin

Abstract

The Mekong River Basin is one of the world’s major transboundary basins. The hydrology, agriculture, ecology, and other watershed functions are constantly changing as a result of a variety of human activities carried out inside and by neighboring countries including China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in order to meet increased food and water demands for an increasing population. The Mekong River, which provides irrigation and fishing for a population of over 60 million people, also has an estimated 88,000 MW of untapped hydropower potential. The construction of dams for energy supply has a wide-ranging impact on downstream reservoir regions, resulting in unprecedented changes in hydrologic functions, the environment, and people’s livelihoods. We present a holistic view of how external stressors such as climate change and variability, land cover, and land-use change affect supply and demand. We present an integrated modeling framework for analyzing the supply–demand scenarios and tradeoffs between different sectors. Specifically, we evaluated the impacts of future climate on irrigation, hydropower, and other needs in the basin through a feedback loop. We focused on hydrologic extremes to evaluate their impacts on the reservoir operations during flood and low flow events. The inflow is projected to change by +13% to −50% in the future, while a 0.25% (15.24 billion m3) reduction is projected for the net irrigation water requirement (NIWR). A unit percentage increase in irrigation demand will reduce energy generation by 0.15%, but climate change has a beneficial impact on dam performance with a predicted increase in energy generation and supply to all sectors. Flood events will cause excessive stress on reservoir operation to handle up to six times more flow volumes; however, the low-flow events will marginally affect the system. While the flow and storage rule curves consider both supply and demand, changing human water use comes second to changing climate or other biophysical considerations. This paper emphasizes the importance of considering feedback between climate–water–human society in the systems modeling framework in order to meet societal and ecological challenges. The findings will provide information on the risks and tradeoffs that exist in the water, energy, and food sectors of the basin.

Analysis of Land Use and Land Cover Using Machine Learning Algorithms on Google Earth Engine for Munneru River Basin, India

“…The continuous and accurate analysis of LULC is an integral part of the sustainable development activities undertaken in any given area. Detailed LC maps are an important input for a variety of scientific studies involving climate change effects on streamflow and water budgets [1,2], geomorphology [3], groundwater management [4][5][6][7], social knowledge management of natural resources [8], and agricultural land monitoring [9][10][11]. LULC maps can help determine which types of lands are suitable for agriculture and which can be useful in watershed management in general [12,13].…”

Freshwater Management Discourses in the Northern Peruvian Andes: The Watershed-Scale Complexity for Integrating Mining, Rural, and Urban Stakeholders

“…This is the case of Central Asia, which is conditioned by its historical background (i.e., Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan were formerly the Soviet Union) and different socio-economic conditions at present, which in turn increase the social, normative, institutional, and infrastructural complexities for managing freshwater systems [ 54 , 55 ]. Likewise, transboundary river basins such as the Amazon (which our case study belongs to) or the Mekong River basin [ 56 ] can pose additional challenges due to complex power relations and different systems of governance, meaning that different discourses could be influencing freshwater management decisions at national, subnational as well as supranational levels. Furthermore, the presented methods can shed light on concrete freshwater monitoring and assessment, for instance, when designing integrated socio-environmental models in the context of sustainable development approaches [ 57 ].…”

Future drought propagation through the water-energy-food-ecosystem nexus – A Nordic perspective

“…However, studies that systematically and holistically assess drought impacts on the WEFE nexus, e.g., utilizing SDM or IAM, are extremely rare. A few examples include those conducted by Sridhar et al (2021) and Kang et al (2021) on the Mekong river in China, Zhao et al (2021) on the Yakima River Basin in the United States, and Wicaksono et al (2019) on a case study in the Republic of Korea.…”