Beyond peak reservoir storage? A global estimate of declining water storage capacity in large reservoirs

Abstract

[1] Water storage is an important way to cope with temporal variation in water supply and demand. The storage capacity and the lifetime of water storage reservoirs can be significantly reduced by the inflow of sediments. A global, spatially explicit assessment of reservoir storage loss in conjunction with vulnerability to storage loss has not been done. We estimated the loss in reservoir capacity for a global data set of large reservoirs from 1901 to 2010, using modeled sediment flux data. We use spatially explicit population data sets as a proxy for storage demand and calculate storage capacity for all river basins globally. Simulations suggest that the net reservoir capacity is declining as a result of sedimentation ($5% compared to the installed capacity). Combined with increasing need for storage, these losses challenge the sustainable management of reservoir operation and water resources management in many regions. River basins that are most vulnerable include those with a strong seasonal flow pattern and high population growth rates such as the major river basins in India and China. Decreasing storage capacity globally suggests that the role of reservoir water storage in offsetting sea-level rise is likely weakening and may be changing sign.Citation: Wisser, D., S. Frolking, S. Hagen, and M. F. P. Bierkens (2013), Beyond peak reservoir storage? A global estimate of declining water storage capacity in large reservoirs, Water Resour. Res., 49, 5732-5739,

Recent Changes in Land Water Storage and its Contribution to Sea Level Variations

“…Lettenmaier and Milly (2009) indicated that the volume of silt accumulated in reservoirs should be removed, which is equal to *4 mm sea level equivalent. Indeed, silting-up of existing reservoirs may already be, or in coming decades may become, a larger effect on impoundment than the construction of new reservoir capacity (Wisser et al 2013). It is also important to note that climate-driven land water storage change has a large negative contribution to SLR over the period 2002-2014.…”

Positive aspects of studying the sedimentations in reservoirs through the natural experiments

“…Lots of papers are published regarding the reservoir sedimentation, monitoring, and balancing (Amitrano et al, 2013;Ali et al, 2014), ecology and sustainability (Detering and Schuettrumpf, 2014) comparative analysis and assessment (Hajji et al, 2014;Bennett et al, 2013;Garg & Jothiprakash, 2013;Wisser et al, 2013;Andredaki, et al, 2014;Gopinath et al, 2014), methodology and management (Hosseinjanzadeh et al, 2015;Dewals et al, 2012), reservoirs modeling and silting prism dynamic (Caputo and Carcione, 2013;Mattheus, 2013;Mansikkamäki, 2013), avoiding the effect on the environment and the catastrophic water floods (Ran et al, 2013;Matchavariani et al, 2016), research on the experiment of reservoir water treatment (Zhang et al, 2016), etc.…”

Physical Model-Based Investigation of Reservoir Sedimentation Processes

“…Among all of these, water supply is a most important operation and highly depends on the reservoir storage capacity. According to the statistics, the capacity of large reservoirs in the world had decreased 5% from 1901 to 2010 [1]. As the world's population increases, reservoir sedimentation will pose more challenges in the utilization of water resources.…”