Water use regimes: Characterizing direct human interaction with hydrologic systems

Abstract

[1] The sustainability of human water use practices is a rapidly growing concern in the United States and around the world. To better characterize direct human interaction with hydrologic systems (stream basins and aquifers), we introduce the concept of the water use regime. Unlike scalar indicators of anthropogenic hydrologic stress in the literature, the water use regime is a two-dimensional, vector indicator that can be depicted on simple x-y plots of normalized human withdrawals (h out ) versus normalized human return flows (h in ). Four end-member regimes, natural-flow-dominated (undeveloped), human-flow-dominated (churned), withdrawal-dominated (depleted), and return-flow-dominated (surcharged), are defined in relation to limiting values of h out and h in . For illustration, the water use regimes of 19 diverse hydrologic systems are plotted and interpreted. Several of these systems, including the Yellow River Basin, China, and the California Central Valley Aquifer, are shown to approach particular end-member regimes. Spatial and temporal regime variations, both seasonal and long-term, are depicted. Practical issues of data availability and regime uncertainty are addressed in relation to the statistical properties of the ratio estimators h out and h in . The water use regime is shown to be a useful tool for comparative water resources assessment and for describing both historic and alternative future pathways of water resource development at a range of scales.

A trading-space-for-time approach to probabilistic continuous streamflow predictions in a changing climate – accounting for changing watershed behavior

“…This is very relevant since many ecological and water resources indicators are of great interest for a wide range of applications (e.g. Weiskel et al 2007;Richter et al, 1996Richter et al, , 2003Poff et al 2006Poff et al , 2007Arthington et al, 2006;Milly et al, 2008;Wagener et al, 2011). One such index that is calculated in this study just as an example is the 7-day low flow with a return period of 10 yr (7Q10) (Chapra, 1997).…”

“…These models are operationally applied in risk analysis to assess how hydrologic hazard frequencies (droughts and floods) might be altered, in water management to derive strategies for the sustainable use of available resources, or to assess what ecosystem services might be available in the future (e.g. Weiskel et al, 2007;Richter et al, 1996Richter et al, , 2003Poff et al, 2006Poff et al, , 2007Arthington et al, 2006;Milly et al, 2008). Sustainable management of water resources and robust risk assessment will Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.…”

Assessing chronic and climate‐induced water risk through spatially distributed cumulative deficit measures: A new picture of water sustainability in India

“…This respects the integrity of the dominant component of the water use data, as available, and also makes it possible to directly inform the social and political institutions of their relative stress and measures for possible reduction at a scale they naturally relate to as opposed to watersheds that typically cross-jurisdictional boundaries, and hence, pose more complex management challenges. The choice of using districts as accounting units here is similar to developing water balance studies at the fine-resolution water use regimes introduced by Weiskel et al [2007] that better informs human interactions with hydrologic systems. Given the limitations in the data availability, an entire water balance study at the domain shown in Weiskel et al [2007] is not feasible for the current problem at hand.…”

Catchment Classification and Services—Toward a New Paradigm for Catchment Hydrology Driven by Societal Needs

“…Weiskel et al (2007) list other names under which R WD is known, including withdrawal ratio (Lane et al, 1999), water scarcity index (Falkenmark et al, 1989;Oki et al, 2001), criticality ratio (Alcamo et al, 2003), level of development (Hurd et al, 1999), and local water demand (Vörösmarty et al, 2005). Weiskel et al (2007) stress that this signature is limited since it ignores return flows and interbasin water import, and they provide an extension that considers internal fluxes and interbasin exchange. Human activities other than the abstraction of water can also have a significant impact on catchment function and behavior.…”

“…Any general catchment classification system therefore needs to acknowledge this impact and provide ways in which it can be quantified. Relative water demand (R WD ) is the most commonly used signature of human impacts on catchment water regimes (Vörösmarty et al, 2000;Weiskel et al, 2007). It is defined as…”