TWINLATIN: Twinning European and Latin-American river basins for research enabling sustainable water resources management. Combined Report D3.1 Hydrological modelling report and D3.2 Evaluation report

摘要

Water use has almost tripled over the past 50 years and in some regions the water demand alreadyudexceeds supply (Vorosmarty et al., 2000). The world is facing a “global water crisis”; in manyudcountries, current levels of water use are unsustainable, with systems vulnerable to collapse from evenudsmall changes in water availability. The need for a scientifically-based assessment of the potentialudimpacts on water resources of future changes, as a basis for society to adapt to such changes, is strongudfor most parts of the world. Although the focus of such assessments has tended to be climate change,udsocio-economic changes can have as significant an impact on water availability across the four mainuduse sectors i.e. domestic, agricultural, industrial (including energy) and environmental. Withdrawaludand consumption of water is expected to continue to grow substantially over the next 20-50 yearsud(Cosgrove & Rijsberman, 2002), and consequent changes in availability may drastically affect societyudand economies.udOne of the most needed improvements in Latin American river basin management is a higher level ofuddetail in hydrological modelling and erosion risk assessment, as a basis for identification and analysisudof mitigation actions, as well as for analysis of global change scenarios. Flow measurements are tooudcostly to be realised at more than a few locations, which means that modelled data are required for theudrest of the basin. Hence, TWINLATIN Work Package 3 “Hydrological modelling and extremes” wasudformulated to provide methods and tools to be used by other WPs, in particular WP6 on “Pollutionudpressure and impact analysis” and WP8 on “Change effects and vulnerability assessment”. With anudemphasis on high and low flows and their impacts, WP3 was originally called “Hydrologicaludmodelling, flooding, erosion, water scarcity and water abstraction”. However, at the TWINLATINudkick-off meeting it was agreed that some of these issues resided more appropriately in WP6 and WP8,udand so WP3 was renamed to focus on hydrological modelling and hydrological extremes.udThe specific objectives of WP3 as set out in the Description of Work are:ud