scholarly journals Spatio-temporal changes in terrestrial water storage in the Himalayan river basins and risks to water security in the region: A review

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 101068 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Shamsudduha ◽  
Dileep K. Panda
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan F. Salazar ◽  
Silvana Bolaños ◽  
Estiven Rodríguez ◽  
Teresita Betancur ◽  
Juan Camilo Villegas ◽  
...  

<p>Many natural and social phenomena depend on the regulation of river flow regimes. Regulation is defined here as the capacity of river basins to attenuate extreme flows, which includes the capacity to enhance low flows during dry periods of time. This capacity depends on how basins store and release water through time, which in turn depends on manifold processes that can be highly dynamic and sensitive to global change. Here we focus on the Magdalena river basin in northwestern South America, which is critical for water and energy security in Colombia, and has experienced water scarcity problems in the past, including the collapse of the national hydropower system due to El Niño 1991-1992. In this basin we study the evolution of regulation and related processes from two perspectives. First, we present a widely applicable conceptual framework that is based on the scaling theory and allows assessing the evolution of regulation in river basins, and use this framework to show how the Magdalena basin’s regulation capacity has been changing in recent decades. Second, we use data from the GRACE mission to investigate variations in water storage in the basin, and identify recent decreasing trends in both terrestrial water storage and groundwater storage. Further we show that temporal and spatial patterns of water storage depletion are likely related to the occurrence of ENSO extremes and pronounced differences between the lower and higher parts of the basin, including the presence of major wetland systems in the low lands and Andean mountains in the high lands. Our results provide insights on how to assess and monitor regulation in river basins, as well as on how this regulation relates to the dynamics of low flows and water storage, and therefore to potential water scarcity problems.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
岳东霞 YUE Dongxia ◽  
苗俊霞 MIAO Junxia ◽  
朱敏翔 ZHU Minxiang ◽  
周妍妍 ZHOU Yanyan ◽  
邹明亮 ZOU Mingliang ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiabao Yan ◽  
Shaofeng Jia ◽  
Aifeng Lv ◽  
Rashid Mahmood ◽  
Wenbin Zhu

The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) in Australia, the largest artesian basin in the world, is rich in groundwater resources. This study analyzed the spatio-temporal characteristics of terrestrial water storage (TWS) in the GAB for 2003–2014 using satellite (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, GRACE) data, hydrological models’ outputs, and in situ data. A slight increase in TWS was observed for the study period. However, there was a rapid increase in TWS in 2010 and 2011 due to two strong La Nina events. Long-term mean monthly TWS changes showed remarkable agreements with net precipitation. Both GRACE derived and in situ groundwater disclosed similar trend patterns. Groundwater estimated from the PCR-GLOBWB model contributes 26.8% (26.4% from GRACE) to the total TWS variation in the entire basin and even more than 50% in the northern regions. Surface water contributes only 3% to the whole basin but more than 60% to Lake Eyre and the Cooper River. Groundwater, especially deeper than 50 meters, was insensitive to climate factors (i.e., rainfall). Similarly, the groundwater in the northern Cape York Peninsula was influenced by some other factors rather than precipitation. The time-lagged correlation analysis between sea surface height and groundwater storage indicated certain correlations between groundwater and sea level changes.


2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Hirschi ◽  
Sonia I. Seneviratne ◽  
Christoph Schär

Abstract This paper presents a new diagnostic dataset of monthly variations in terrestrial water storage for 37 midlatitude river basins in Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia. Terrestrial water storage is the sum of all forms of water storage on land surfaces, and its seasonal and interannual variations are in principle determined by soil moisture, groundwater, snow cover, and surface water. The dataset is derived with the combined atmospheric and terrestrial water-balance approach using conventional streamflow measurements and atmospheric moisture convergence data from the ECMWF 40-yr Re-Analysis (ERA-40). A recent study for the Mississippi River basin (Seneviratne et al. 2004) has demonstrated the validity of this diagnostic approach and found that it agreed well with in situ observations in Illinois. The present study extends this previous analysis to other regions of the midlatitudes. A systematic analysis is presented of the slow drift that occurs with the water-balance approach. It is shown that the drift not only depends on the size of the catchment under consideration, but also on the geographical region and the underlying topography. The drift is in general not constant in time, but artificial inhomogeneities may result from changes in the global observing system used in the 44 yr of the reanalysis. To remove this time-dependent drift, a simple high-pass filter is applied. Validation of the results is conducted for several catchments with an appreciable coverage of in situ soil moisture and snow cover depth observations in the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, and China. Although the groundwater component is not accounted for in these observations, encouraging correlations are found between diagnostic and in situ estimates of terrestrial water storage, both for seasonal and interannual variations. Comparisons conducted against simulated ERA-40 terrestrial water storage variations suggest that the reanalysis substantially underestimates the amplitude of the seasonal cycle. The basin-scale water-balance (BSWB) dataset is available for download over the Internet. It constitutes a useful tool for the validation of climate models, large-scale land surface data assimilation systems, and indirect observations of terrestrial water storage variations.


Author(s):  
J. Y. Seo ◽  
S.-I. Lee

Over the past decades, extreme weather events such as floods and droughts have been on a steady increase. Especially, ungauged or hard-to-reach areas turn out to be the most affected areas by the unexpected water-related disasters. It is usually due to insufficient observation data, and deterioration of infra-structures as well as inadequate water management system. For such reasons, reliable estimation of runoff is important for the planning and the implementation of water projects in ungauged areas. North Korea, whose terrain is mostly hilly and mountainous, has become vulnerable to floods and droughts due to poor watershed management based on unreliable hydrological information along with rapid deforestation. Runoff estimation using data from multi-platform satellites having broad spatio-temporal coverage could be of a valuable substitute for ground-observed measurements. In this study, monthly runoff in North Korea (38°N - 43°N, 124°E - 131°E) was estimated by combining space-borne data from multi-platform satellites with ground observations. Period of analysis is from January 2003 to December 2013. Data sets used for this study are as in the following: {1} Terrestrial Water Storage Anomaly (TWSA) from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), (2) Evapotranspiration from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), (3) Satellite-observed precipitation from Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM), and (4) Ground-observed precipitation from World Meterological Organization (WMO) (see Figure 1 and Table 1). These components are balanced with the terrestrial water storage change, and runoff can be estimated from eq. (1).


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document