Socio-Economic Impact of Evaporation Losses from Reservoirs Under Past, Current and Future Water Availability Scenarios in the Semi-Arid Segura Basin

J. Maestre-Valero (), D. Martínez-Granados, V. Martínez-Alvarez and J. Calatrava

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2013, vol. 27, issue 5, 1426 pages

Abstract: This study assesses evaporation losses from water reservoirs in the semi-arid Segura basin (south-east Spain), one of the most water stressed European catchments. These losses are evaluated from both the hydrologic and economic perspectives under different water availability scenarios that are based on water policy trends and climate change predictions. We take a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis, combining energy balance models to assess the effect of climate change on evaporation from water bodies, Class-A pan data and pan coefficients to determine evaporation loss on a regional scale, and non-linear mathematical programming modelling to simulate the economic impact of water use and allocation in the basin. Our results indicate that water availability could be reduced by up to 40 % in the worst-case scenario, with an economic impact in the 32–36 % range, depending on the indicator in question. The total annual evaporation loss from reservoirs ranges from 6.5 % to 11.7 % of the water resources available for irrigation in the basin, where evaporation from small reservoirs is more than twice that from large dams. The economic impact of such losses increases with water scarcity, ranging from 4.3 % to 12.3 % of the value of agricultural production, 4.0 % to 12.0 % of net margin, 5.8 % to 10.7 % of the irrigated area, and 5.4 % to 13.5 % of agricultural employment. Results illustrate the importance of evaporation losses from reservoirs in this region and the marked upward trend for future scenarios. Besides, they highlight the extent of the impact of climate change on future water resources availability and use in southern Europe. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Keywords: Water management; Climate change; Water economics; Value of water; Dams (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-012-0245-4 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:27:y:2013:i:5:p:1411-1426

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-012-0245-4

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().