H43E-1553
Global Impacts of Water Management Activities on Soil Moisture and Runoff Trends
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Tian Zhou, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States, Bart Nijssen, University of Washington, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Seattle, WA, United States, Ingjerd Haddeland, Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, Oslo, Norway and Dennis P Lettenmaier, University of California Los Angeles, Department of Geography, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Abstract:
Water management activities, such as dam construction, reservoir operation, and irrigation, alter surface water fluxes and change the terrestrial water storage in space and time. In this study we investigate the impacts of water management activities on soil moisture storage and runoff in global basins during the past 60 years. Over 200 basins, which account for 80% of global land area, are simulated using a large scale water management model. About 660 reservoirs with a total storage capacity nearly 70% of the global reservoir capacity are simulated. Irrigation is represented by a soil moisture deficit-based irrigation scheme within the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) macro-scale hydrological model with time-varying cropland areas extracted from HYDE 3.1 and MIRCA datasets. We compare monthly soil moisture and runoff estimates from simulations with and without irrigation and dam regulations over the simulated basins. The comparison suggests that in some highly populated basins the water management activities significantly alter trends in soil moisture and runoff.
