HYDROLOGY AND WATER

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
LAKES
• Lakes store the largest volume of fresh surface
waters (90,000 km3)
• Over forty times more than is found in rivers or
streams and about seven times more than is
found in wetlands area.
• Together with reservoirs, they are estimated to
cover a total area of about 2.7 million km2
which represents 2% of the land’s surface
(excluding polar regions)
• Most lakes are small. The world’s 145 largest lakes
are estimated to contain over 95% of all lake
freshwater.
• Lake Baikal (Russia) is the world’s largest, deepest
and oldest lake and it alone contains 27% of the
freshwater contained in all the world’s lake.
• Lake waters serve commerce, fishing, recreation,
and transport and supply water for much of the
world’s population.
• However, detailed hydrological studies have been
conducted on only 60% of the world’s largest lakes.
• LakeNet is one example of an organisation working
with local and regional governments, NGOs and
IGOs in over 100 countries in order to address this
knowledge deficit, to tackle degrading conditions,
and to develop lake basin management
programmes that include important protection
strategies.
• Recently, a global database of lakes, reserviors and
wetlands has been created and validated at the
Center for Environmental Systems Research,
University of Kassel (CESR, Germany) in
cooperation with World Wildlife Fund.
• The primarily digital mapbased approach,
complete with fully downloadable data,
facilitates the linking of existing local and
regional registers and remotely sensed data with
the new inventory.
• As such it is an important achievement related
to global hydrological and climatological models.
• Rivers and streams An estimated 263
international river basins have drainage areas
that cover about 45% (231 km2) of earth’s land
surface (excluding polar regions).
• The world’s 20 largest river basins have
catchment areas ranging from 1 to 6 million
km2 and are found on all continents.
• The total volume of water stored in rivers and
streams is estimated at about 2,120 km3 .
• The Amazon carries 15% of all the water
returning to the world’s oceans, while the
Congo- Zaire basins carries 33% of the river
flow in Africa.
• Variability in runoff is depicted by river/stream
flow through time graphs (hydrographs).
• There are 3 low and 3 high runoff periods that
were experienced in the 20th century by
documenting the natural fluctuations in river
runoff in terms of both time and place.
• These types of periodic variations are not
particularly predictable as they occur with
irregular frequency and duration.
• In contrast, we are commonly able to predict
runoff variability on an annual and seasonal
basis long-term measurement records in many
river locations.
• Monitoring networks for river flow and water
levels in rivers, reservoirs and lakes,
supplemented by estimates for regions where
there is no extensive monitoring, help
understand runoff and evaluate how to
predict its variability.
• Measurement networks are relatively
common in many developed populated areas.
Most of the world’s major contributing
drainage areas have relatively adequate
monitoring networks in place.
• The Global Runoff Database Center (GRDS, Germany),
under World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)
reports on river discharge data from a network of 7,222
stations, about 4,750 of which have daily and 5, 580 of
which have monthly data.
• Other international programmes such as the European
Water Archive and national data centers supplement
this (data from private institutions are not included).
• The longer the flow record, the better we can predict
variability in runoff- input that is specially important in
the context of flood forecasting, hydropower
generation and climate change studies.
• The quality and adequacy of data record for
runoff vary tremendously.
• While some records extend back 200 years in
Europe and 100 to 150 years on other
continents, in many developing nations the
data record is generally of insufficient length
and quality to carry out either reliable water
resources assessments or cost-effective
project designs.
• As a result, for these regions, data is rarely
compiled or distributed effectively on a global
scale.
WETLANDS
• Wetlands are water saturated environments
and are commonly characterized as swamps,
bogs, marshes and lagoons.
• Wetlands cover an area about 4 times greater
than the world’s lakes.
• However they contain only 10% of water
found in lakes and other surface waters.
• During the last century, an extensive number
of wetlands were destroyed or converted to
other forms of land-use.
• However, because they total about 6% of the
Earth’s land surface, they are critical areas to
consider and protect in terms of surface water
and, in some regions, groundwater resources.
• Currently, extensive work is being done
through the wise use campaigns sponsored
principally by Ramsar, WWF, and UNEP.
• These campaigns seek to maintain critical
services in water and related livelihood and
food production areas.
• GROUNDWATER
• Global groundwater volume stored beneath the
earth’s surface represents 96% of the earth’s
unfrozen freshwater.
• Groundwater provides useful functions and
services to humans and the environment.
• It feeds springs and streams, supports wetlands,
maintains land surface stability in areas of unstable
ground, and acts as an overall critical water
resource serving our water needs.
• UNESCO and WMO support the International
Groundwater Resources Assessment Center
(IGRAC, Netherland).
• IGRAC estimates that about 60% of withdrawn
groundwater is used to support agriculture in
arid and semi arid climates.
• Morris et al., report that groundwater systems
globally provides 25-40% of the world’s drinking
water.
• Today, half the world’s megacities and hundreds
of other major cities on all continents rely upon
or make significant use of groundwater.
• Small towns and rural communities particularly
rely on it for domestic supples.
• Even where groundwater provides lower
percentages of total water used, it still can serve
local areas with relatively low-cost good quality
water where no other accessible supply exists.
• Finally, groundwater can bridge water supply gaps
during long dry seasons and during droughts.
Occurrence and renewability :
• Recent, globally focused groundwater
publications, point out that large variations in
groundwater exists in terms of occurrence, rate of
renewal and volumes stored in different types of
aquifers.
• Geological characteristics are also an important factor.
While shallow basement aquifers contain limited
storage, large volumes of groundwater are stored in
thick sedimentary basins.
• Aquifers in folded mountain zones tend to be
fragmented, while volcanic rock environments have
unique hydraulic conditions.
• Shallow aquifer systems have near-surface water tables
that are strongly linked to and interchange with surface
water bodies.
• The Worldwide Hydrological Mapping and Assessment
Programme (WHYMAP) also contributes to mapping
aquifer systems, collecting and disseminating
information related to groundwater at a global scale.
• Groundwater as a potential resource, can be
characterized by two main variables:
 Its rate of renewal
 Its volume in storage
• Much of ground water is derived from recharge
events that occurred during past climatic
conditions and is referred to as nonrenewable
groundwater.
• The world’s largest nonrenewable groundwater
systems are located in arid locations of Northern
Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Australia, as
well as under permafrost in Western Siberia.
Trans-boundary Groundwater:
• In terms of shared water resources, groundwater
does respect administrative boundaries.
• However, addition to these aquifer systems, there
are numerous smaller renewable trans-boundary
aquifers located worldwide.
• Attention to shared groundwater resources
management is increasing with strong support
from several international organizations that are
addressing sustainable management strategies
which would enable shared socioeconomic
development of such aquifers.
• At present, the UNESCO Internationally Shared
Aquifer Resources Management (ISARM) project is
compiling an inventory of trans-boundary aquifers.
Natural Groundwater Quality:
• Most renewable groundwater is of a high quality, is
adequate for domestic use, irrigation and other
uses, and does not require treatment.
• However, it should be noted that uncontrolled
development of groundwater resources, without
analysis of the chemical and biological content, is
an unacceptable practice that can (as in the
example of fluoride and arsenic problems in
Southeast Asia) lead to serious health problems.
• Some waters have beneficial uses owing to
naturally high temperatures and levels of
minerals and gas.
• This is the case of thermal waters where these
properties have been created by high
geothermal gradients, volcanic settings or
natural radioactive decay.
• In most cases, these ground waters are highly
developed and used for health and recreation
and geothermal energy services.
Groundwater Monitoring Networks:
• Groundwater monitoring networks, as with
surface water systems, operate differently at
national, regional and local levels
• Groundwater levels constitute the most
observed parameters, whereas widespread and
continuous water quality and natural
groundwater discharge and abstraction networks
are operational in only a few countries.
• Several large scale efforts are underway to
upgrade monitoring and networks, for example,
in Europe.
• However, groundwater assessment, monitoring
and data management activities are for the most
part minimal or ineffective in many developing
countries.
• Lack of data and institutional capacity is endemic,
making adequate groundwater development and
management difficult.
• GEMS/ water (a UNE Program) is currently adding
national groundwater data to its international
water quality database.
• This will supplement the current global
knowledge of groundwater quality information
collected and displayed by IGRAC
on its website, which include special reports on
both arsenic and fluorides in groundwater.
WATER AVAILABILITY:
• Efforts to characterise the volume of water
available to a given nation have been ongoing
for several decades.
• The primary input for many of these estimates is
an information database (AQUASTAT) that has
historically been developed and maintained by
FAO. It is based on data related to the quantity
of water resources and uses a water-balance
approach for each nation.
• This database has become a common
reference tool used to estimate each nation’s
renewable water resources.
• FAO has compiled an Index of Total Actual
Renewable Water Resources (TARWR).
 Human Impacts

• A number of forces continue to seriously

affect our natural water resources.
• Many of these are primarily the result of
human actions and include ecosystem and
landscape changes, sedimentation, pollution,
overabstraction and climate change.
• The removal, destruction or impairment of
natural ecosystems are among the greatest
causes of critical impacts on the sustainability
of our natural water resources.
• However it should be emphasized that the
ecosystems with which we interact are directly
linked to the well-being of our natural water
resources.
• Although it is difficult to integrate the intricacies of
ecosystems into traditional and more hydrologically-
based water assessment and management
processes, this approach is being strongly advocated
in some sectors and scientific domains.
• The basis of this approach is the recognition that
each type of landscape change will have its own
specific impact, usually directly on ecosystems and
directly or indirectly on water resources.
• The magnitude of the impacts will vary
according to the setting’s conditions with a
wide range of possible landscape changes.
• Changes that can occur to landscapes include:
 forest clearance
Crop and grazing lands replacing grasslands or
other natural terrestrial ecosystems
Urbanization (leading to changes in infiltration
and runoff patterns as well as to pollution
Wetlands removal or reduction
New raodwork for transportation and mining in
quarries or large scale open pits.