A New Global Metric of Water Scarcity Accounting for the Role of Storage

Abstract:

Societies and economies are challenged by variable water supplies. Water storage infrastructure, on a range of scales, can help to mitigate hydrological variability. This study uses a water balance model to investigate how storage capacity can improve water security in the world’s 403 most important river basins, by substituting water from wet months to dry months. We construct a new water balance model for 680 ‘basin-country units’ (BCUs), which simulates runoff, water use (from surface and groundwater), evaporation and trans-boundary discharges.

We find that, so far, storage capacity in most basins is able to buffer inter- and intra-annual water variability . However, when hydrological variability and net withdrawals are taken into account, along with existing storage capacity, we find risks of water shortages in the Indian subcontinent, Northern China, Spain, the West of the US, Australia and several basins in Africa. Dividing basins into basin-country units enabled assessment of upstream dependency in trans-boundary rivers.

Including Environmental Water Requirements into the model, we find that in many basins in India, Northern China, South Africa, the US West Coast, the East of Brazil, Spain and in the Murray basin in Australia human water demand leads to over-abstraction of water resources important to the ecosystem. Then, a Sequent Peak Analysis is conducted to estimate how much storage would be needed to satisfy human water demand whilst not jeopardising environmental flows. The results are consistent with the water balance model in that basins in India, Northern China, Western Australia, Spain, the US West Coast and several basins in Africa would need more storage to mitigate water supply variability and to meet water demand.