Water quality management could cost-effectively halve future water scarcity considering the Pearl River Basin

[EN] Reducing water scarcity requires both mitigation of the increasing water pollution and adaptation to the changing availability and demand of water resources under global change. However, state-of-the-art water scarcity modeling efforts often ignore water quality and associated biogeochemical pr...

ver descrição completa

Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Baccour, Safa, Goelema, Goelema, Taher-Kahil, Mohamed, Albiac-Murillo, José, van Vliet, Michelle, Zhu, Xueqin, Strokal, Maryna
Formato: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Recursos:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/224391
Acesso em linha:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/224391
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Water scarcity
MARINA-cost optimization modeling
RCP-SSP climate scenarios
Descrição
Resumo:[EN] Reducing water scarcity requires both mitigation of the increasing water pollution and adaptation to the changing availability and demand of water resources under global change. However, state-of-the-art water scarcity modeling efforts often ignore water quality and associated biogeochemical processesinthedesignofwaterscarcityreductionmeasures.Here,weidentify cost-effective options for reducing future water scarcity by accounting for waterquantity andqualityinthehighlywaterstressedandpollutedPearlRiver BasininChinaundervarioussocio-economic and climatic change scenarios based on the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). Our modeling approach integrates a nutrient model (MARINA-Nutrients) with a cost-optimization procedure, considering biogeochemistry and human activities on land in a spatially explicit way. Results indicate that future water scarcity is expected to increase by a factor of four in most parts of the Pearl River Basin by 2050 under the RCP8.5-SSP5 scenario. Results also show that water quality management options could half future water scarcity in a cost-effective way. Our analysis could serve as an example of water scarcity assessment for other highly water stressed and polluted river basins around the world and inform the design of cost-effective measures to reduce water scarcity.