Hydrology and Earth System Sciences www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net 1027-5606 1607-7938 10 5 2006 10.5194/hess-10-703-2006 http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/10/703/2006/ http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/10/703/2006/hess-10-703-2006.html http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/10/703/2006/hess-10-703-2006.pdf 703 713 2006-10-04 Detecting the long-term impacts from climate variability and increasing water consumption on runoff in the Krishna river basin (India) L. M. Bouwer laurens.bouwer@ivm.falw.vu.nl J. C. J. H. Aerts P. Droogers A. J. Dolman Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands FutureWater, Wageningen, The Netherlands Department of Hydrology and Geo-environmental Sciences, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Variations in climate, land-use and water consumption can have profound effects on river runoff. There is an increasing demand to study these factors at the regional to river basin-scale since these effects will particularly affect water resources management at this level. This paper presents a method that can help to differentiate between the effects of man-made hydrological developments and climate variability (including both natural variability and anthropogenic climate change) at the basin scale. We show and explain the relation between climate, water consumption and changes in runoff for the Krishna river basin in central India. River runoff variability due to observed climate variability and increased water consumption for irrigation and hydropower is simulated for the last 100 years (1901–2000) using the STREAM water balance model. Annual runoff under climate variability is shown to vary only by about 14–34 millimetres (6–15%). It appears that reservoir construction after 1960 and increasing water consumption has caused a persistent decrease in annual river runoff of up to approximately 123 mm (61%). Variation in runoff under climate variability only would have decreased over the period under study, but we estimate that increasing water consumption has caused runoff variability that is three times higher. Aerts, J. C. J. H., Kriek, M., and Schepel, M.: STREAM, spatial tools for river basins and environment and analysis of management options: set up and requirements, Phys. Chem. Earth Part B, 24, 591–595, 1999. Aerts, J. C. J. H., Hassan, A., Savenije, H. H. G., and Khan, M. F.: Using GIS tools and rapid assessment techniques for determining salt intrusion: STREAM, a river basin management instrument, Phys. Chem. Earth Part B, 25, 265–273, 2000. Alcamo, J., Döll, P., Kaspar, F., and Siebert, S.: Global change and global scenarios of water use and availability: an application of WaterGAP 1.0. Report A9701, Centre for Environmental Systems Research, University of Kassel, Kassel, 1997. Arnell, N. W.: Relative effects of multi-decadal climatic variability and changes in the mean and variability of climate due to global warming: future streamflows in Britain, J. Hydrol., 270, 195–213, 2003. Arnell, N. W, Liu, C., Compagnucci, R., et al.: Hydrology and water resources, in: Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: McCarthy, J. J., Canziani, O. F., Leary, N. A., Dokken, D. J., and White, K. S., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 191–233, 2001. Belward, A. S., Estes, J. E., and Kline, K. D.: The IGBP-DIS global 1 km land cover data set DISCover: a project overview, Photogrammetric Eng. Remote Sens., 65, 1013–1020, 1999. Biggs, T. W., Thenkabail P. S., Gumma, M. K., Scott, C. A., Parthasaradhi, G. R., and Turral, H. N.: Irrigated area mapping in heterogeneous landscapes with MODIS time series, ground truth and census data, Krishna Basin, India, Int. J. Remote Sens., in press, 2006. Burn, D. H. and Hag Elnur, M. A.: Detection of hydrologic trends and variability, J. Hydrol., 255, 107–222, 2002. Changnon, S. A. and Demissie, M.: Detection of changes in streamflow and floods resulting from climate fluctuations and land-use drainage changes, Climatic Change, 32, 411–421, 1996. Doorenbos, J. and Pruitt, W. O.: Guidelines for predicting crop water requirements, Irrigation and Drainage Paper No. 24, Food and Agricultural Organisation, Rome, 1975. Döll, P. and Siebert, S.: Global modeling of irrigation water requirements, Water Resour. Res., 38, 1037, 2002. Falkenmark, M. and Lannerstad, M.: Consumptive water use to feed humanity: curing a blind spot, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 9, 15–28, 2005. Haddeland, I., Lettenmaier D. P., and Skaugen, T.: Effects of irrigation on the water and energy balances of the Colorado and Mekong river basins, J. Hydrol., 324, 210–223, 2006. Herschy, R.: World Catalogue of Maximum Observed Floods, Publication 184, Int. Assoc. Hydrol. Sci., Wallingford, 2003. IDAG: Detecting and attributing external influences on the climate system: a review of recent advances, J. Climate, 18, 1291–1314, 2005. Krishnamurthy, V. and Shukla, J.: Intraseasonal and interannual variability of rainfall over India, J. Climate, 13, 4366–4377, 2000. Kundzewicz, Z. W. and Robson, A. J.: Change detection in hydrological records – a review of the methodology, Hydrol. Sci. J., 49, 7–19, 2004. Letcher, R. A., Schreider, S. Y., Jakeman, A. J., Neal, B. P., and Nathan, R. J.: Methods for the analysis of trends in streamflow due to changes in catchment condition, Environmetrics, 12, 613–630, 2001. Magilligan, F. J., Nislow, K. H., and Graber, B. E.: Scale-independent assessment of discharge reduction and riparian disconnectivity following flow regulation by dams, Geology, 31, 569–572, 2003. Meybeck, M.: Global analysis of river systems: from Earth system controls to Anthropocene syndromes, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, 358, 1973–1984, 2003. Middelkoop, H., Daamen, K., Gellens, D., Grabs, W., Kwadijk, J. C. J., Lang, H., Parmet, B. W. A. H., Schädler, B., Schulla, J., and Wilke, K.: Impact of climate change on hydrological regimes and water resources management in the Rhine Basin, Climatic Change, 49, 105–128, 2001. Mitchell, T. D. and Jones, P. D.: An improved method of constructing a database of monthly climate observations and associated high-resolution grids, Int. J. Climatol., 25, 693–712, 2005. Munot, A. A. and Kothawale, D. R.: Intra-seasonal, inter-annual and decadal scale variability in summer monsoon rainfall over India, Int. J. Climatol., 20, 1387–1400, 2000. Nash, J. E. and Sutcliffe, J. V.: River flow forecasting through conceptual models part I: a discussion of principles, J. Hydrol., 10, 282–290, 1970. Nilsson, C., Reidy, C. A., Dynesius, M., and Revenga, C.: Fragmentation and flow regulation of the world's large river systems, Science, 308, 405–408, 2005. Ramesh, R. and Subramania, V.: Temporal, spatial and size variation in the sediment transport in the Krishna River basin, India, J. Hydrol., 98, 53–65, 1988. Rockström, J., Axberg, G. N., Falkenmark, M., Lannerstad, M., Rosemarin, A., Caldwell, I., Arvidson, A., and Nordström, M.: Sustainable pathways to attain the millennium development goals; assessing the key role of water, energy and sanitation, Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, 2005. Rodier, J. A. and Roche, M.: World Catalogue of Maximum Observed Floods, Publication 143, Int. Assoc. Hydrol. Sci., Wallingford, 1984. Rosnay, P. de, Polcher, J., Laval K., and Sabre, M.: Integrated parameterization of irrigation in the land surface model ORCHIDEE. Validation over Indian Peninsula, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1986, 2003. Schreider, S. Y., Jakeman, A. J., Letcher, R. A., Nathan, R. J., Neal, B. P., and Beavis, S. G.: Detecting changes in streamflow response to changes in non-climatic catchment conditions: farm dam development in the Murray-Darling basin, Australia, J. Hydrol., 262, 84–98, 2002. Sekhar, M. C. and Indira, Ch.: Modelling chloride-discharge relationships in Krishna river basin, Water Sci. Technol., 48, 57–63, 2003. Stott, P. A.: Attribution of regional-scale temperature changes to anthropogenic and natural causes, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1728, 2004. Syvitski, J. P. M., Vörösmarty, C. J., Kettner, A. J., and Green, P.: Impact of humans on the flux of terrestrial sediment to the global coastal ocean, Science, 308, 376–380, 2005. Tharme, R. E.: A global perspective on environmental flow assessment: emerging trends in the development and application of environmental flow methodologies for rivers, River Res. Appl., 19, 397–441, 2003. Thornthwaite, C. W.: An approach toward a rational classification of climate, The Geographical Review, 38, 55–94, 1948. Thornthwaite, C. W. and Mather, J. R.: Instructions and tables for computing potential evapotranspiration and the water balance, Publications in Climatology, 10, 183–243, Laboratory of Climatology, Drexel Institute of Technology, Centerton, New Jersey, 1957. Van Deursen, W. P. A. and Kwadijk, J. C. J.: Rhineflow: an integrated GIS water balance model for the river Rhine, in: Application of Geographic Information Systems in Hydrology and Water Resources Management, edited by: Kovar, K. and Nachtnebel, H. P., Publication 211, Int. Assoc. Hydrol. Sci., Wallingford, 507–519, 1993. Van Deursen, W. P. A. and Kwadijk, J. C. J.: The impacts of climate change on the water balance of the Ganges-Brahmaputra and Yangtze Basin, Report RA94-160, Resource Analysis, Delft, 1994. Vörösmarty, C. J., Fekete, B., and Tucker, B. A.: Global river discharge, 1807–1991, version 1.1 (RivDIS dataset), Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham NH, 1998. Vörösmarty, C. J., Green, P., Salisbury, J., and Lammers, R. B.: Global water resources: vulnerability from climate change and population growth, Science, 289, 284–288, 2000. Wallach, B.: Irrigation developments in the Krishna Basin since 1947, The Geographical Review, 74, 127–144, 1984. Wallach, B.: British irrigation works in India's Krishna Basin, J. Historical Geography, 11, 155–174, 1985. Winsemius, H. C., Savenije, H. H. G., Gerrits, A. M. J., Zapreeva, E. A., and Klees, R.: Comparison of two model approaches in the Zambezi river basin with regard to model reliability and identifiability, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 10, 339–352, 2006.