Global assessment of current water resources using total runoff integrating pathways

Abstract

The anticipated water scarcity in the first half of this century is one of the international issues of most concern, which needs to be adequately addressed. However, even though the issue has an international impact and worldwide monitoring is critical, there are limited global estimates at present. In this study, annual water availability has been derived from annual runoff estimated by land surface models using total runoff integrating pathways (TRIP) with 0.5° by 0.5° longitude/latitude resolution globally. The global distribution of abstraction was estimated for each sector at the same spatial resolution based on country-based statistics of municipal water use, industrial water use, and agricultural intakes, using a global geographical information system with global distribution of population and irrigated crop land area. The total population under water stress estimated for 1995 corresponded very well with earlier estimates. However, the number is highly dependent on how one assumes the volume of water from upstream of a region, which can be considered as “available” water resources within the region. Therefore it is important, even for global scale analysis, to evaluate the regional water quality deterioration and the real consumption of water resources in the upper part of the stream, as well as the accessibility of water. Further studies should be promoted by an integrated approach to improve the accuracy of future projections on both the natural and social aspects of water resources.