Development of a New Quantile-Based Method for the Assessment of Regional Water Resources in a Highly-Regulated River Basin

Salam A. Abbas and Yunqing Xuan ()
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Salam A. Abbas: Swansea University Bay Campus
Yunqing Xuan: Swansea University Bay Campus

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2019, vol. 33, issue 9, No 14, 3187-3210

Abstract: Abstract In this paper, we present a study of assessing regional water resources in a highly regulated river basin, the Dee river basin in the UK. The aims of this study include: 1) to address the issue of hydrological simulations for regulated river catchments; 2) to develop a new method revealing the trends of water resources for different scenarios (e.g. dry and wet) and 3) to facilitate water resources assessment under both climate change impacts and regulations. We use the SWAT model to model the hydrological process of the river basin with carefully designed configurations to isolate the impact from the water use regulations and practice. The spatially-distributed model simulations are then analysed with the quantile regression method to reveal the spatial and temporal patterns of regional water resources. The results show that this approach excels in presenting distributed, spatially focused trend information for extremely dry and wet scenarios, which can well address the needs of practitioners and decision-makers in dealing with long-term planning and climate change impact. The representation of the management practice in the modelling process helps identify the impact from both climate change and necessary regulatory practices, and as such lays a foundation for further study on how various management practices can mitigate the impact from other sources such as those from climate change. The novelty of the study lies in three aspects: 1) it devises a new way of isolating and representing management practice in the hydrological modelling process for regulated river basins; 2) it integrates the QR technique to study spatial-temporal trends of catchment water yield in a distributed fashion, for wet and dry scenarios instead of the mean; 3) the combination of the methods are able to reveal the impacts from various sources as well as their interactions with catchment water resources.

Keywords: Regulated river basins; SWAT; Quantile regression; Climate change impact; Natural flow restoration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11269-019-02290-z

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