Global Monthly Water Scarcity: Blue Water Footprints versus Blue Water Availability

By Arjen Y. Hoekstra, M. Mekonnen, A. Chapagain, Ruth E. Mathews, B. Richter. PLoS ONE, 2012

945 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Freshwater scarcity is a growing concern, placing considerable importance on the accuracy of indicators used to characterize and map water scarcity worldwide. We improve upon past efforts by using estimates of blue water footprints (consumptive use of ground- and surface water flows) rather than water withdrawals, accounting for the flows needed to sustain critical ecological functions and by considering monthly rather than annual values. We analyzed 405 river basins for the period 1996–2005. In 201 basins with 2.67 billion inhabitants there was severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year. The ecological and economic consequences of increasing degrees of water scarcity – as evidenced by the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo), Indus, and Murray-Darling River Basins – can include complete desiccation during dry seasons, decimation of aquatic biodiversity, and substantial economic disruption.

Subfields: Ocean Engineering, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2481e9cfbc1211c831d0c18751753142ccddc35f

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Citations in the corpus

The WULCA consensus characterization model for water scarcity footprints: assessing impacts of water consumption based on available water remaining (AWARE) (2018, background): “…this varied from two orders of magnitude (0.01 – 1) for Pfister et al. (2009) and Berger et al. (2014), and up to 5, 7, and 9 orders of magnitude for Boulay et al. (2011b), Hoekstra et al. (2012), and Swiss Eco-Scarcity method (Frischknecht et al. 2008), respectively, excluding the zero values.”
A global water scarcity assessment under Shared Socio-economic Pathways – Part 2: Water availability and scarcity (2012, result): “7–10.0 %, respectively, in 2071– 2100. This indicates that the total global withdrawal-based potential irrigation water demand increases in almost all scenarios. This is consistent with the findings of D öll (2002) who reported the results of similar numerical experiments.”
The water footprint of Tunisia from an economic perspective (2015, methodology): “Here, we define water carcity based on blue water consumption (blue WF) rather than lue water withdrawal, which is more meaningful, because a sigificant share of withdrawn water returns to rivers and aquifers nd becomes available for reuse (Hoekstra et al., 2012).”
Spatially explicit assessment of water embodied in European trade: A product-level multi-regional input-output analysis (2016, methodology): “…level is the most relevant level for water management – as has been recognised already by the European Union’s Water Framework Directive (European Parliament and Council 2000) and by widely used water scarcity assessment methods (e.g. BWSI; Hoekstra et al. 2012; EEA 2014; Pfister et al. 2009).”
The Global Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus (2018, background): “The water footprint of agriculture (including both crops and livestock production) has been estimated in the range 6.75 × 1012 m3/year for the 1995–2005 period (Mekonnen & Hoekstra, 2010) and 11.8 × 1012 m3/year for 2010 (Carr et al., 2013).”
Review and classification of indicators of green water availability and scarcity (2015, background): “Examples of associated indicators are: the water crowding indicator (Falkenmark et al., 1989), the withdrawal-5 to-discharge ratio (Vörösmarty et al., 2000), Water Poverty Index (Sullivan et al., 2003); Water Stress Indicator (Smakhtin et al., 2004); Water Stress Index (Pfister et al., 2009); Dynami”
High‐resolution modeling of human and climate impacts on global water resources (2016, background): “…Western and Central United States, Northeast China, Iran, the Middle East and North Africa, and Southern Europe [Gleick, 2003, 2010; V€or€osmarty et al., 2010; Oki and Kanae, 2006; Hanasaki et al., 2008a, 2008b; Kummu et al., 2010; Hoekstra et al., 2012; Schewe et al., 2014; Gain and Wada, 2014].”
The water footprint of the EU for different diets (2013, background): “In several EU28 river basins, this stress is significant, as shown by (Hoekstra et al., 2012).”