Browsing by Author "Kretschmer, Nicole"

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Open Access
Impacts of the existing water allocation scheme on the Limarí watershed : Chile, an integrative approach
(2015) Kretschmer, Nicole; Bárdossy, András (Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr.-Ing. )
The research is motivated by an interest in evaluating the special Chilean water management framework, relating to the 1981 Water Code legislation, introduced by the military government. This law mainly strengthened private property rights and increased private autonomy in water use. In particular, it is of interest to assess the impacts of this legislation in the context of the current highly stressed water availability situation in central and northern Chile, combined with intensive and increasing agricultural demands. The reason to look at this region first is to test a catchment with a more or less vivid water market. The purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of water rights on water management practices under the present situation as well as changing situations. Here changing situation refer on one hand to improvement and extension of infrastructure, on the other hand to different use of the water in magnitude and further time and space. The latter one mainly based on the water market. The main objective of this study is to investigate if the proposed WRAP Modelling System (Water Rights Analysis Package) which is used in the whole state of Texas, is able to model the consequences of the allocation scheme in the present, as well changing situations, incorporating the Chilean legal framework, here especially the allocation according to water rights. The main changes are subject to i. new legislation to incorporate in the allocation of water resources ii. further development, like new reservoirs in the upstream sub-catchments, iii. water right transfers as well as iv. different operation policies WRAP was chosen to investigate the impacts of the water management practices. It combines detailed information describing water resource development, management, allocation and use with natural river system hydrology represented by naturalized streamflows, assuming that the hydrological pattern of a catchment stays the same in the future (Wurbs, 2011). Beside the development of the spatial configuration of the system, which has been defined as a set of control points (CP) that represent pertinent sites in the river basin, geospatial data, time series data, census data, operational data sheets of the organisations as well as information and data about the water rights of each stakeholder have been statistically and spatially pre-processed in order to be able to estimate agricultural water demand, understand the legal system in general and of the basin under study in particulary. Further information of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), monitored data of the National Water Authority (DGA), elaborated data of the National Centre of Natural Resources (CIREN) and historical and actual regional as well as local studies were consulted to elaborate all the needed information to model the system. With this information and preprocessed data the WRAP modelling system was implemented, to quantify the impacts of decision making and its consequences on the whole system. Model results include water supply reliabilities (including reliability indices) as well as flow and storage frequency statistics developed from the simulation results representing long-term probabilities or percent-of-time estimates. Furthermore shortage metrics have been developed by the model and evaluated for each scenario. The model includes the following frequency statistics for concisely summarizing modelling results: (a) volume and period reliability tables for water supply diversion, (b) frequency tables for naturalized, regulated and unappropriated flows, reservoir storage volumes, as well as instream flow shortages and (c) reservoir storage-reliability tables. After all the different scenario simulations and analysis of the results it can be stated that the WRAP modelling system is applicable for the questions under study based on the legal Chilean water management framework. Flexibility is provided for adaption of a broad range of modelling approaches. A huge variety of management records can be combined in many different ways to be able to model any application. Ingenuity is required from the modeller to achieve the incorporation of sometimes quite complex allocation rules, apply different target options, demands, administrate a variety of users and include new developments within a multiple and multipurpose reservoir-river management system. Although some simplification of the independent sub-catchments was necessary, the achieved results show that the consequences of allocation decisions, including water transfer and future development are simulated in a satisfactory manner and can therefore be much better understood. The model system is adequate to serve as a basis for decision making within the chilean legal framework.