Speaker
Description
Arid and semi-arid areas globally face the greatest pressures to deliver and manage freshwater resources. These areas are particularly vulnerable to climate variability or climate change, with consequences that may have very serious social and environmental effects. Accurately assessing and managing available and renewable water resources is more diffi-cult in semi-arid regions, compared with water-rich countries, since the science base is limited, data are scarce and the humid zone experience is inappropriate. Moreover, many arid regions are the focus of potential conflicts over water scarcity, making it necessary to develop strategies to support peace and security. Improved scientific understanding, cooperation and data sharing all provide ways of bettering water management and of supporting conflict resolution.
The water balance simulation is a tool that may be useful in terms of risk assessment and scenario analysis procedures, that can help us identify the vulnerabilities to change, predict risk, assess the significance of the risk relative to the im-pact and uncertainties, and to propose and test adaptation strategies. Both climate and other factors need to be consid-ered in assessing sensitivity to change. Such a framework would be useful to focus and guide global change research. Such events have huge global economic and social impacts, and a classification and prediction capacity are a prerequi-site for adaptive management. The model provides estimations of recharge and evaporation rates and groundwater withdrawals due to meteorological data and hydrogeological parameterization required by groundwater flow models. An application of the model to a region of about 4000 Km2 in the central part of Morocco is presented here, as an ex-ample of monthly and annual water balance calculation and analysis.
| Affiliation of speaker | University Mohammed VI Polytechnique, 43140 Ben Guerir, Morocco; Université Paris II, 75005 Paris, France |
|---|---|
| Publication | International journal «Resource-Efficient Technologies» |
| Position of speaker | PhD - Student |
