Improved modelling of the freshwater provisioning ecosystem service in water scarce river basins

• DOI: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2017.03.033
• Publication Date: 2017-04-10T18:47:24Z
• Authors: Andrea Momblanch; Javier Paredes-Ar...; Joaquín Andreu
• Keywords: Provisioning; Freshwater ecosystem

The authors acknowledge the support of Universitat Politecnica de Valencia through its Support Programme for Research and Development. We also wish to thank Confederacion Hidrogr afica del Duero (belonging to the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment) for the data provided in developing this study and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for its financial support through the projects SCARCE (Consolider-Ingenio 2010 CSD2009-00065) and NUTEGES (CGL2012-34978). We also value the support provided by the European Community in financing the Seventh Framework Program projects DROUGHTR&SPI (FP7-ENV-2011, 282769), ENHANCE (FP7-ENV-2012, 308438), the H2020 project IMPREX (H2020-WATER-2014-2015, 641811), the grant WAMCD (EC-DG Environment No. 07.0329/2013/ 671291/SUB/ENV.C1) and the Life þ project LIFE ALBUFERA (LIFE12 ENV/ES/000685).<br/>[EN] Freshwater provisioning by the landscape contributes to human well-being through water use for drinking, irrigation and other purposes. The assessment of this ecosystem service involves the quantification of water resources and the valuation of water use benefits. Models especially designed to assess ecosystem services can be used. However, they have limitations in representing the delivery of the service in water scarce river basins where water management and the temporal variability of water resource and its use are key aspects to consider. Integrating water resources management tools represents a good alternative to ecosystem services models in these river basins. We propose a modelling framework that links a rainfall-runoff model and a water allocation model which allow accounting for the specific requirements of water scarce river basins. Moreover, we develop a water tracer which rebounds the value of the service from beneficiaries to water sources, allowing the spatial mapping of the service.<br/>