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Main tributaries and locations of hydrologic stations and stream gauges within the Kunduz River Watershed.
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The Kunduz River is one of the main tributaries of the Amu Darya Basin in North Afghanistan. Many communities live in the Kunduz River Basin (KRB), and its water resources have been the basis of their livelihoods for many generations. This study investigates climate change impacts on the KRB catchment. Rare station data are, for the first time, use...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... Kunduz River is one of the main tributaries of the Amu Darya. It originates from the North side of the Hindukush Mountain and flows through the wide lowlands of Baghlan to finally join the main Amu Darya stream in Qala-i-Zal area ( Figure 2). The Kunduz watershed has an area of 28,024 km 2 , which is 4.5% of the country [19] and about 1.9% of the population of the country live in the River Basin [20]. ...
Context 2
... upper part of the KRB is characterized by high mountains and steep valleys. In the upper part, the KRB is fed by the rainfall, snow, and small glaciers of the Koh-e-Baba range and the Hindu-Kush mountains [24] ( Figure 2). The KRB has a number of tributaries, including the Khinjan, Andarab, and Bamyan rivers [28]. ...
Context 3
... water carried by the river supports an intensive irrigated agriculture, which is the main economic basis of the region. There are a number of river gauging stations within the watershed, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 4 presents the mean monthly discharge of the recent five years from 2014 to 2018 recorded in the four main gauging stations, Doab, Puli-Khumri, Char-Dara, and Kulukh-Tepa (for locations, see Figure 2). ...
Context 4
... water carried by the river supports an intensive irrigated agriculture, which is the main economic basis of the region. There are a number of river gauging stations within the watershed, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 4 presents the mean monthly discharge of the recent five years from 2014 to 2018 recorded in the four main gauging stations, Doab, Puli-Khumri, Char-Dara, and Kulukh-Tepa (for locations, see Figure 2). Historically, the monthly peak flows generally occurred during April through July, which resulted in very high discharge at the downstream drainage outlet (Figure 4). ...
Context 5
... the KRB, two weather stations with more than 20 years of data are available, North Salang and Taliqan. Historical data are not available for the Kunduz meteorological station (see Figure 2). North Salang is located in the upstream, in a very high altitude with high precipitation and low temperature; Taliqan lies in the lowland area near of Kunduz. ...
Similar publications
The Kunduz River is one of the main tributaries of the Amu Darya Basin in North Afghanistan. Many communities live in the Kunduz River Basin (KRB), and its water resources have been the basis of their livelihoods for many generations. This study investigates climate change impacts on the KRB catchment. Rare station data are, for the first time, use...
Citations
... In Afghanistan, 80% of water resources have some contribution from snow and glaciers, including water required for summer irrigation (Lebedeva andLarin 1991, Favre andKamal 2004) and hence food production. Therefore, warming in combination with precipitation changes has led to a strong decrease in river discharge for snow-fed basins in Afghanistan (Akhundzadah et al. 2020). Muhammad et al. (2017) and Casale et al. (2020) showed that winter snowfall was a crucial influence on the likelihood of summer drought in the Afghan lowlands. ...
Rapid climate change is impacting water resources in Afghanistan. The consequences are poorly known. Suitable mitigation and adaptation strategies have not been developed. Thus, this paper summarizes current status of knowledge in relation to Afghan water resources. More than 130 scientific articles, reports and data sources are synthesized to review the potential impacts of climate change on the cryosphere, streamflow, groundwater and hydrological extremes. The available information suggests that Afghanistan is currently witnessing significant increases in temperature, less so precipitation. There is evidence of shifts in the intra-annual distribution of streamflow, with reduced summer flows in non-glaciated basins and increased winter and spring streamflow. However, in the short-term there will be an increase in summer ice melt in glaciated basins, a “glacial subsidy”, which sustains summer streamflow, despite reduced snow accumulation. The future prognosis for water resources is likely to be more serious when this glacier subsidy ends.
... Constrained to data availability, very few studies are available on climate variability analysis in Afghanistan. Those available are mostly focused on local or basin scale climate change analysis of glacier concentrated around Hindu-Kush region (Akhundzadah et al. 2020;Ososkova et al. 2000;Unger-Shayesteh et al. 2013) and few on precipitation trend analysis (Aawar et al. 2019). Studies at national scale are based on the use of gridded precipitation data and mostly focused on climate change analysis (Aich et al. 2017;Qutbudin et al. 2019;Stockholm Environment Institute 2009). ...
The civil war, harsh climate, tough topography, and lack of accurate meteorological stations have limited observed data across Afghanistan. To fulfill the gap, this study analyzed the trend in precipitation and its extremes using Asian Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation (APHRODITE) daily dataset between 1951 and 2010 at the spatial resolution of 0.25° × 0.25°. Non-parametric modified Mann-Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimator were employed to detect the trend and quantify it at the significance level of 5%. Significant decreasing trends were observed only in small clusters of southwestern regions ranging between 0 and −1.5mm/year and the northeastern region between −1.5 and −6 mm/year for the annual time series. A similar trend pattern was observed in the spring season decreasing at the rate of −0.15 and 0.54 mm/year in the northeastern and 0 to −0.15 mm/year southwestern region. A decrease in spring precipitation is expected to affect crop production especially in the northeastern region which hosts 22% of the arable area. An increasing trend in the eastern region at a maximum rate of 0.16 mm/year was observed which could intensify the flooding events. Trend analysis of extreme precipitation indices indicated similar spatial distribution to the mean precipitation, concentrated around southwestern, northeastern, and eastern regions. The increasing frequency of consecutive dry days in the western region and very heavy precipitation (R10mm) and extremely heavy precipitation (R20mm) in the eastern region could be fueling the occurrence of droughts and floods respectively. Taking these findings of the erratic nature of rainfall and extreme events into consideration for sustainable management of water resources would be fruitful.
... Constrained to data availability, very few studies are available on climate variability analysis in Afghanistan. Those available are mostly focused on local or basin scale climate change analysis of glacier concentrated around Hindu-Kush region (Akhundzadah et al. 2020;Ososkova et al. 2000;Unger-Shayesteh et al. 2013) and few on precipitation trend analysis (Aawar et al. 2019). Studies at national scale are based on the use of gridded precipitation data and mostly focused on climate change analysis (Aich et al. 2017;Qutbudin et al. 2019;Stockholm Environment Institute 2009). ...
The civil war, harsh climate, tough topography and lack of accurate meteorological stations has limited observed data across Afghanistan. In order to fulfill the gap, this study analyzed the trend in precipitation and its extremes using Asian Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation (APHRODITE) daily dataset between 1951 to 2010 at the spatial resolution of 0.25˚˟0.25˚. Non-parametric modified Mann-Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimator were employed to detect trend and quantify it at the significance level of 5%. Significant decreasing trends were observed only in small clusters of southwestern regions ranging between 0 to -1.5mm/year and northeastern region between -1.5 to -6 mm/year for the annual time series. Similar trend pattern was observed in spring season decreasing at the rate of -0.15 to 0.54 mm/year in northeastern and 0 to -0.15 mm/year southwestern region. Decrease in spring precipitation is expected to affect crop production especially in northeastern region which host 22 % of the arable area. Increasing trend in eastern region at maximum of 0.16 mm/year was observed which could intensify the flooding events. Trend analysis of extreme precipitation indices indicated similar spatial distribution to the mean precipitation, concentrated around southwestern, northeastern, and eastern regions. Increasing frequency of consecutive dry days in western region and very heavy precipitation (R10mm) and extremely heavy precipitation (R20mm) in eastern region are fueling the occurrence of droughts and floods respectively. Taking these findings of erratic nature of rainfall and extreme events into consideration for sustainable management of water resources would be fruitful.
Helmand is the most important river in Afghanistan and an indispensable water resource for southeastern Iran. Recent water depletions in the river, however, have caused environmental issues in the region with further repercussions on long-term hydro-political debates between the countries of Iran and Afghanistan. The primary reasons underlying depletions in the river's water levels remain, however, unclear, and are the main objective of this study.Therefore, this study proposes a hydro-political analysis of the Helmand Basin by analyzing precipitation through Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) data, Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) land data for groundwater analysis, and Landsat 5 and 8 Images from 1991 to 2020 to classify vegetation and waterbodies using a Support Vector Machine classifier and identify the prime cause of downstream water depletions. Despite severe droughts, the preliminary findings indicated increases in rainfall, groundwater sources, water bodies, and vegetation in the river upstream, which conveys the inconsequential share of droughts to the overall water shortage as opposed to human interventions and water usage which have also shown to increase in the river upstream. Further findings suggest that the severe downstream water depletions are primarily on account of upstream water consumptions that have triggered environmental degradations and are a threat to human habitations.
HIGHLIGHTS
Water shortages in the Lower Helmand are caused by increased water storage at the basin upstream.;
The Support Vector Machine algorithm produced reasonable results on vegetation and waterbodies classification.;
Increases in water storage at the Upper Helmand have evoked environmental degradation at the downstream section.;
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the water situation of the states of India and to identify key areas in which intervention is necessary for sustainable development and poverty elevation.
Design/methodology/approach
To understand the trend and situation of water across the states, Water Poverty Index (WPI) has been constructed. WPI has been computed for the years 2012 and 2018 to get a picture of temporal change happening in the region. Further, descriptive statistics were used to show the required changes.
Findings
Jharkhand and Rajasthan continue to be the worst performer in both time periods. Water poverty was the least in the states of Goa and Chandigarh for both time periods. Although owing to improvement in access and capacity component, the water status of India as a whole improved from 2012 to 2018 but few states have witnessed a decline in their water situation mainly due to deterioration in the environment and resource components.
Originality/value
This paper adds to the relatively scarce literature on the water situation conducted for the states of India. The findings of the paper provide insights into the lacking areas responsible for the deterioration in water poverty status. The results can be utilized for framing proper policies to combat the water woes of the country.
There are a few regions in the world, where climate change impacts are more intense than other regions of the world, and Himalaya is the case. The Himalaya, one of the biodiversity hotspot regions and provider of ecosystem services to billion of people all across the world. Present study reviewed and synthesized climate change studies in the Himalayan region in general and Indian Himalayan region (IHR) in particular. Analysis of the literature indicates exponentially increase in climate change studies 2005 onward in the IHR, and maximum are from Jammu and Kashmir (105) followed by Uttarakhand (100) and Himachal Pradesh (77). Among the subject types, maximum climate change impact was studied on water resources/glacier retreat (141 studies) followed by agriculture (113) and forests/biodiversity (86). Increasing temperature, frequent drought spells, erratic rainfall and declining snowfall are commonly reported indicators of climate change. For instance, temperature is reported to increase by 1.5 °C in the Himalaya than an average increase of 0.74 °C globally in last century; however, it varied in eastern (0.1 °C per decade and western Himalayas (0.09 °C per decade. An increase in temperature between 0.28 and 0.80 °C per decade was reported for North-western Himalaya and 0.20–1.00 °C per decade for Eastern Himalaya. The higher altitude of Himalayan and Trans-Himalayan zone are reported to be warming at higher rates. Many of the glaciers were reported to be retreating in both eastern and western Himalaya. Heavy rainfall is becoming very common in the region often accompanied by cloudbursts that aggravate flood situation many times. Perception-based studies of the region reported to provide firsthand and detailed descriptions of climate change indicators and impacts from rural and remote areas, where no instrumental data are available.
