Albert Nkwasa

• PhD
• Research Scholar at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

An understanding of the spatiotemporal behaviour of Meteorological drought (MD) and Hydrological drought (HD) is crucial for analysing how drought propagation occurs. Here, drought events were treated as three-dimensional grid structures spanning space (latitude and longitude) and time. 31 years (1971–2001) of global MD and HD events were analysed...

Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 requires innovative and often disruptive approaches to address critical gaps in global water quality monitoring. The most recent SDG Indicator 6.3.2 (Proportion of bodies of water with good ambient water quality) progress report highlights a critical water quality in situ data gap, with an urgent need for co...

Quantifying the global extent of anthropogenic impacts on freshwater quality remains challenging due to limited monitoring data, especially in low and middle-income regions. To address this gap and improve our understanding of surface water quality, we introduce CoSWAT-WQ, a large-scale water quality model developed to simulate river water quality...

Global hydrological models are essential tools for understanding water resources and assessing climate change impacts at planetary scales, supporting water management, flood risk assessment, and sustainable development initiatives worldwide. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT+) has demonstrated robust performance across various environments a...

Since its emergence in the 1990s, the science of attributing observed phenomena to human-induced and natural climate drivers has made remarkable progress. To ensure the relevance and uptake of climate impact attribution studies, scientists must effectively engage with stakeholders. This engagement allows stakeholders to pose key questions, which sc...

Due to the continued increase in land use changes and changing climatic patterns in the Lake Victoria basin, understanding the impacts of these changes on the water quality of Lake Victoria is imperative for safeguarding the integrity of the freshwater ecosystem. Thus, we analyzed spatial and temporal patterns of land cover, precipitation, and wate...

Understanding the spatial and temporal patterns of sediment loading in water bodies is crucial for effective water quality management. Remote sensing (RS) has emerged as a valuable and reliable tool for monitoring turbidity, which can provide insights into sediment dynamics in water bodies. In this study, we investigate the potential of turbidity d...

CONTEXT Climate change's profound implications for Mediterranean agriculture underscores the urgency of adaptation strategies. These strategies, whether incentivized or farmer-driven, are pivotal in mitigating crop yield losses and harnessing evolving climatic conditions. While the influence of agronomic adaptations on crop yields is well-explored,...

The Nile basin is the second largest basin in Africa and one of the regions experiencing high climatic diversity with variability of precipitation and deteriorating water resources. As climate change is affecting most of the hydroclimatic variables across the world, this study assesses whether historical changes in river flow and sediment loads at...

Although many studies have assessed the singular impacts of future land use and climate change on river hydrology, few studies have investigated the distinct and combined impacts of land use and climate change on river flows particularly in developing countries faced with a challenge of limited data. This study addressed the aforementioned gap and...

Climate change is projected to increase the volatility of agricultural productivity within the Sub-Saharan Africa region. However, current knowledge of climate change impacts in this region is largely derived from coarse-grid global datasets that lack sufficient detail for local applications. The derived impacts are thus generalized across large sp...

Due to the continued increase in land use changes and changing climatic patterns in the Lake Victoria basin, understanding the impacts of these changes on the water quality of Lake Victoria is imperative for safeguarding the integrity of the freshwater ecosystem. Thus, we analyzed spatial and temporal patterns of land cover, precipitation, and wate...

Africa depends on its water resources for hydroelectricity, inland fisheries and water supply for domestic, industrial and agricultural operations. Anthropogenic climate change (CC) has changed the state of these water resources. Land use and land cover have also undergone significant changes due to the need to provide resources to a growing popula...

Water pollution is a global challenge threatening human health, limiting food production and reducing ecosystem functions. The situation has worsened in almost all rivers in the Global South since the 1990s. However, Africa’s aquatic ecosystems have not been the focal point of research in comparison to other global regions. In many parts of Africa,...

Climate change and extreme weather events (such as droughts, heatwaves, rainstorms and floods) pose serious challenges for water management, in terms of both water resources availability and water quality. However, the responses and mechanisms of river water quality under more frequent and intense hydroclimatic extremes are not well understood. In...

Africa depends on its water resources for hydroelectricity, inland fisheries, and water supply for domestic, industrial, and agricultural operations. Anthropogenic climate change (CC) has changed the state of these water resources. Land use and land cover has also undergone significant changes due to the need to provide resources to a growing popul...

Participatory water resource management requires modeling techniques that are accurate and flexible yet stakeholder-friendly. While different modeling frameworks offer advantages and disadvantages, system dynamics (SDs) models have seen sustained use as a stakeholder-friendly approach for participatory water resource modeling. Physically based mode...

Climate change poses a fundamental threat to agriculture within the Nile basin due to the magnitude of projected impacts and low adaptive capacity. So far, climate change impacts on agriculture for the basin have mostly been assessed for single-cropping systems, which may bias the results considering that the basin is dominated by different croppin...

The Nile basin is the second largest basin in Africa and one of the regions experiencing high climatic diversity with variability and deteriorating water resources. As climate change is affecting most of the hydroclimatic variables across the world, this study assesses whether historical changes in river flow and sediment loads in the Nile basin ma...

Participatory water resources management requires modeling techniques that are accurate and flexible, yet stakeholder-friendly. While different modeling frameworks offer advantages and disadvantages, System Dynamics (SD) models have seen sustained use as a stakeholder-friendly approach for water resources modelling. In contrast, physically-based mo...

In most (sub)-tropical African cultivated regions, more than one cropping season exists following the (one or two) rainy seasons. An additional cropping season is possible when irrigation is applied during the dry season, which could result in three cropping seasons. However, most studies using agro-hydrological models such as the Soil and Water As...

Study region Nile basin. Study focus Several studies have shown a relationship between climate change and changes in sediment yield. However, there are limited modeling applications that study this relationship at regional scales mainly due to data availability and computational cost. This study proposes a methodological framework using the SWAT+...

To date, most regional and global hydrological models either ignore the representation of cropland or consider crop cultivation in a simplistic way or in abstract terms without any management practices. Yet, the water balance of cultivated areas is strongly influenced by applied management practices (e.g. planting, irrigation, fertilization, and ha...

To date, most regional and global hydrological models either ignore the representation of cropland or consider crop cultivation in a simplistic way or in abstract terms without any management practices. Yet, the water balance of cultivated areas is strongly influenced by applied management practices (e.g. planting, irrigation, fertilization, harves...

In most (sub)-tropical African cultivated regions, more than one cropping cycle exists following the (one or two) rainy seasons. During the dry season, an additional cropping cycle is possible when irrigation is applied, which could result in 3 cropping seasons. In most agro-hydrological model applications such as SWAT+ in Africa, only one cropping...

In SWAT and SWAT+ models, the variations in hydrological processes are represented by Hydrological Response Units (HRUs). In the default models, agricultural land cover is represented by a single growing cycle. However, agricultural land use, especially in African cultivated catchments, typically consists of several cropping seasons, following dry...