Impact of intensive water use from farm dams on the storage dynamics in strategic reservoirs

ABSTRACT

The construction of dams and interbasin water transfers are major strategies to adapt to water scarcity. In the semi-arid Jaguaribe basin, Brazil, large strategic reservoirs supply water for urban centres, while farm dams serve multiple demands of rural communities. We used the Model of Water Availability in SemiArid Environments (WASA) to assess the water storage dynamics of strategic reservoirs impacted by: (i) water withdrawal from farm dams located upstream; (ii) interbasin water transfer to the Jaguaribe basin. Simulations show that intensive water use from smaller reservoirs reduces large reservoir volumes by less than 10%, whereas inflows from the São Francisco Integration Project to the basin can increase by 6% the period of time in which reservoir capacity is above the alert volume. The practice of saving water from small dams can be abandoned, enabling higher agricultural production without compromising the water supply of large urban centres.

KEYWORDS:

• water use
• small dams
• hydrological modelling
• inter-basin water transfer
• semi-arid

Editor A. Castellarin; Associate Editor N. Ilich

Editor A. Castellarin; Associate Editor N. Ilich

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) for funding the research (PROBRAL, Grant 88881.371462/2019-01); and the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), for the Masters scholarship granted to Thales Lima and for supporting Pedro Medeiros and José Carlos de Araújo as Research Productivity Fellow; Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2023.2272669.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior [88881.371462/2019-01].