The impacts of river regulation and water diversion on the hydrological drought characteristics in the Lower Murrumbidgee River, Australia

Wen, Lei; Rogers, Kerrylee; Ling, Joanne; Saintilan, Neil

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2011.05.037

Cited by 89 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…López-Moreno et al (2009) found that the second largest reservoir in Europe increased the duration and severity of hydrological drought over downstream areas. Similar studies found that reservoir regulation might reduce the drought severity over upstream areas but increase it over downstream areas in Australian and Chinese catchments (Wen et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2015), as many reservoirs were built for meeting the irrigation demand more reliably. However, there is limited knowledge on the integrated impact of human activities on hydrological drought processes over a large river basin due to the lack of human water-use data, which is one of the major issues that hinders the understanding of hydrological drought in the Anthropocene (Van Loon et al, 2016b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Understanding and seasonal forecasting of hydrological drought in the Anthropocene

Yuan

Zhang

Wang

et al. 2017

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

114

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Abstract. Hydrological drought is not only caused by natural hydroclimate variability but can also be directly altered by human interventions including reservoir operation, irrigation, groundwater exploitation, etc. Understanding and forecasting of hydrological drought in the Anthropocene are grand challenges due to complicated interactions among climate, hydrology and humans. In this paper, five decades of naturalized and observed streamflow datasets are used to investigate hydrological drought characteristics in a heavily managed river basin, the Yellow River basin in north China. Human interventions decrease the correlation between hydrological and meteorological droughts, and make the hydrological drought respond to longer timescales of meteorological drought. Due to large water consumptions in the middle and lower reaches, there are 118-262 % increases in the hydrological drought frequency, up to 8-fold increases in the drought severity, 21-99 % increases in the drought duration and the drought onset is earlier. The non-stationarity due to anthropogenic climate change and human water use basically decreases the correlation between meteorological and hydrological droughts and reduces the effect of human interventions on hydrological drought frequency while increasing the effect on drought duration and severity. A set of 29-year (1982-2010) hindcasts from an established seasonal hydrological forecasting system are used to assess the forecast skill of hydrological drought. In the naturalized condition, the climate-model-based approach outperforms the climatology method in predicting the 2001 severe hydrological drought event. Based on the 29-year hindcasts, the former method has a Brier skill score of 11-26 % against the latter for the probabilistic hydrological drought forecasting. In the Anthropocene, the skill for both approaches increases due to the dominant influence of human interventions that have been implicitly incorporated by the hydrological postprocessing, while the difference between the two predictions decreases. This suggests that human interventions can outweigh the climate variability for the hydrological drought forecasting in the Anthropocene, and the predictability for human interventions needs more attention.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Understanding and seasonal forecasting of hydrological drought in the Anthropocene

Yuan

Zhang

Wang

et al. 2017

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

114

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“…Wu et al (2008) followed a similar approach, using a threshold level approach and the theory of runs to analyze streamflow droughts in the Missouri River basin in Nebrasaka (USA), despite the numerous dams and reservoirs built for irrigation and other uses within the basin. Wen et al (2011) also assessed the impacts of regulation and water diversion on the nature of hydrological droughts in the Murrumbidgee River (Australia). Thus, including regulated rivers in the evaluation of hydrological droughts should be a compulsory task since regulation and water management may be reinforcing streamflow droughts downstream the dams.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Streamflow droughts in the Iberian Peninsula between 1945 and 2005: spatial and temporal patterns

Lorenzo‐Lacruz¹,

Morán-Tejéda²,

Vicente‐Serrano³

et al. 2013

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. In this study we analyzed the spatiotemporal variability of streamflow droughts in the Iberian Peninsula from 1945 to 2005. Streamflow series belonging to 187 homogeneously distributed gauging stations across the study area were used to develop a standardized streamflow index (SSI), which facilitated comparison among regimes and basins, regardless of streamflow magnitudes. A principal component analysis was performed to identify homogeneous hydrological regions having common features based on the temporal evolution of streamflows. Identification of drought events was carried out using a threshold level approach. We assessed the duration and magnitude of drought episodes and the changes that occurred between two contrasting periods for each hydrological region. The results showed a trend toward increased drought severity in the majority of regions. Drought duration, magnitude and spatial coverage were found to depend mainly on climatic conditions and the water storage strategies in each basin. In some basins these strategies have altered river regimes, and in others created a high level of dependence on storage and water transfer rates.

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“…And, in most cases, Bthe distant water cannot quench present thirst^. Therefore, an IBT project shall only be finalized and implemented after carrying out comprehensive feasibility study and evaluation of rationality and legitimation regarding the scale, benefits, ecological environment, society, and other aspects, as well as careful planning and design (Wen et al, 2011;Locatelli et al, 2014;Zhao et al, 2015). Otherwise, another way should be taken.…”

Section: Countermeasures Against the Negative Ecological Impacts Of Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Eco-environmental impact of inter-basin water transfer projects: a review

Zhuang

2016

Environ Sci Pollut Res

187

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The objective reality of uneven water resource distribution and imbalanced water demand of the human society makes it inevitable to transfer water. It has been an age-old method to adopt the inter-basin water transfers (IBTs) for alleviating and even resolving the urgent demand of the waterdeficient areas. A number of countries have made attempts and have achieved enormous benefits. However, IBTs inevitably involve the redistribution of water resources in relevant basins and may cause changes of the ecological environment in different basins. Such changes are two-sided, namely, the positive impacts, including adding new basins for waterdeficient areas, facilitating water cycle, improving meteorological conditions in the recipient basins, mitigating ecological water shortage, repairing the damaged ecological system, and preserving the endangered wild fauna and flora, as well as the negative impacts, including salinization and aridification of the donor basins, damage to the ecological environment of the donor basins and the both sides of the conveying channel system, increase of water consumption in the recipient basins, and spread of diseases, etc. Because IBTs have enormous ecological risk, it is necessary to comprehensively analyze the inter-basin water balance relationship, coordinate the possible conflicts and environmental quality problems between regions, and strengthen the argumentation of the ecological risk of water transfer and eco-compensation measures. In addition, there are some effective alternative measures for IBTs, such as attaching importance to water cycle, improving water use efficiency, developing sea water desalination, and rainwater harvesting technology, etc.

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The impacts of river regulation and water diversion on the hydrological drought characteristics in the Lower Murrumbidgee River, Australia

Cited by 89 publications

References 27 publications

Understanding and seasonal forecasting of hydrological drought in the Anthropocene

Understanding and seasonal forecasting of hydrological drought in the Anthropocene

Streamflow droughts in the Iberian Peninsula between 1945 and 2005: spatial and temporal patterns

Eco-environmental impact of inter-basin water transfer projects: a review

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