Rethinking water resources management in a context of environmental change

环境变化背景下重新思考水资源管理

• 批准号: RGPIN-2016-05094
• 负责人: Seidou, Ousmane
• 金额: $ 1.75万
• 依托单位: University of Ottawa
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=615493
• 关键词: Rethinking; water; resources; management; context

Healthy water resources are key to the wealth and well-being of Canadians. Benefits to society, industry, and ecosystems are dependent on our ability to maintain water quality at acceptable levels as well as maintain an adequate temporal distribution of water quantity. A major challenge arises because both water quantity and quality are threatened by stressors including intensive agriculture, increased water demand, land use shifts, and climate change. And, the trend is expected to continue. The applicant has been working on the projection of the main stressors to water quality and quantity (climate change and land use), on the improvement of downscaling techniques, and the development of improved water management routines in hydro-ecological models. In the proposed research program, he aims to build on his previous work by developing methodologies and tools that can streamline projected changes into adaptation decisions. The problem is not new, and several researchers (including the applicant) have already tried to tackle the problem using a top-down approach, which essentially consists of using of a limited set of climate change scenarios to discover future risks. However, recent research has identified critical limitations in that approach. For instance, it has emerged that even when multi-model, multi-scenario projections are used, not all possible conditions are covered and, therefore, plausible risks may be overlooked. There is also no established way to evaluate the credibility of given projection scenarios, making it a challenge to include them in a decision or design framework. The bottom-up approach, which consists of identifying risky situations using stochastically generated climate states and then using projections to evaluate their likelihood in the future, was recently proposed to address the limitations of the top-down approach (Brown et al. 2011; Brown and Wilby 2012; Prudhomme et al. 2010), but several issues remain unaddressed. The objective of this five-year research program is to contribute toward issues that are yet to be adequately addressed in the bottom-up approach. Projected activities include the development and testing of a novel stochastic method that would clone and perturb an initial set of climate change scenarios derived from climate models and generate new ones that would cover the range of variability observed on the historical period; the exploration of new ways of evaluating the adequacy of a given weather generator for risk discovery in the bottom-up framework; the development of criteria to assess the value of a combination of climate models and downscaling technique in the bottom-up framework; and a case study to showcase the improvements in the South Nation watershed. Although the application will be centered in one pilot watershed, the methodology will be of interest for Canada and beyond.

健康的水资源是加拿大人财富和福祉的关键。对社会、工业和生态系统的好处取决于我们是否有能力将水质维持在可接受的水平，以及维持适当的水量时间分布。出现了一个重大挑战，因为水的数量和质量都受到压力因素的威胁，包括集约化农业、增加的水需求、土地利用变化和气候变化。而且，这一趋势预计将继续下去。申请人一直致力于对水质和水量(气候变化和土地利用)的主要压力因素进行预测，改进缩小尺度技术，并在水生态模型中制定改进的水管理程序。在拟议的研究计划中，他的目标是通过开发能够将预测的变化简化为适应决策的方法和工具，在他之前的工作基础上再接再厉。这个问题并不新鲜，一些研究人员(包括申请人)已经尝试使用自上而下的方法来解决这个问题，这种方法基本上包括使用一组有限的气候变化情景来发现未来的风险。然而，最近的研究发现了这种方法的严重局限性。例如，现已发现，即使使用多模型、多情景预测，也不能涵盖所有可能的情况，因此可能会忽视看似合理的风险。也没有既定的方法来评估给定预测情景的可信度，这使得将其纳入决策或设计框架是一项挑战。自下而上的方法，包括使用随机产生的气候状态识别风险情况，然后使用预测来评估它们在未来的可能性，最近被提出以解决自上而下方法的局限性(Brown等人)。2011年；Brown and Wilby 2012年；Prudhomme等人。2010年)，但仍有几个问题没有得到解决。这项为期五年的研究计划的目标是为自下而上的方法尚未充分解决的问题做出贡献。预计开展的活动包括开发和测试一种新颖的随机方法，该方法将克隆和扰乱从气候模型得出的一套初步气候变化情景，并产生涵盖历史时期观察到的变率范围的新情景；探索评估特定天气产生因素是否足以在自下而上框架内发现风险的新方法；在自下而上框架内制订评估气候模型和缩小尺度技术组合价值的标准；以及展示南方民族分水岭改进情况的个案研究。虽然应用程序将集中在一个试点分水岭，但加拿大和其他地区对该方法将感兴趣。