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Global change scenarios in the prediction of reservoir sedimentation and water availability
GEORGE LEITE MAMEDE1, JOSÉ CARLOS DE ARAÚJO2 & AXEL BRONSTERT1
1 Department of Geoecology, University of Potsdam, PO Box 60 15 53, 14415 Potsdam, Germany
Department of Agricultural Engineering, Federal University of Ceará. Campus do Pici, Bloco 804, PO Box 60.451-970, Fortaleza-CE, Brazil
Abstract The goal of this research is to analyse sedimentation and resulting water availability reduction in reservoirs from a tropical sub-humid environment, using the case study of the Acarape do Meio Reservoir, located in Ceará (Brazil). The simulation considers four reference scenarios: two climatic and two macroeconomic. The lumped HIDROSED model was applied to the 208.2 km2 Acarape catchment for a simulation period of 50 years (2001–2050) to quantify sediment yield and deposition in the reservoir. The results show that reservoir sedimentation varies from 4.17 to 9.58 million tons, depending on the scenario. This implies a reduction of water availability (with 90% reliability level) ranging from 5.6 Mm3 year-1 to 0.4 Mm3 year-1 (38% to 3%, respectively) in five decades. The research concludes that the reservoir sedimentation processes are more strongly affected by soil use than by climatic changes.
Key words Brazil; reservoir; scenarios; sedimentation; water availability