Evaluating the Effects of Climate Change on Water Reliability in Iran's Karkheh River Basin

摘要

Karkheh River Basin (KRB) is the major water supply source for more than four million people in southwest Iran. Five riparian provinces of the KRB system have been pursuing aggressive development projects involving construction of multiple dams. These projects together with increasing water withdrawals by Iran's neighboring country, Iraq has resulted in demise of the Hoor-Al-Azim marshland in the outlet of the basin. The frequent droughts in the region over the past decades have exacerbated the reliability of KRB water resources and the health of Hoor-Al-Azim marshland. This study evaluates the effects of climate change on KRB's ability to meet the increasing water demand in the region. Given the uncertainty in climate change projections, different climate change scenarios are selected through a clustering method, which tries to identify the scenarios with dissimilar characteristics. This helps evaluating the system under a range of climate change scenarios while minimizing redundancy in simulation model runs. Different systems performance indicators are used to examine the status of the KRB system under future climatic and water demand projections. Finally, different adaptation measures are identified and tested to minimize the undesirable effects of future changes on the system.