Impact of Climate Change on Natural Resource Management

497 Pages·2010·14.558 MB·English

by  Bipal K. Jana, Soumyajit Biswas, Mrinmoy Majumder, Pankaj Roy, Asis Mazumdar (auth.), Bipal K. Jana, Mrinmoy Majumder (eds.)

Impact of Climate Change
on Natural Resource Management

Bipal K. Jana Mrinmoy Majumder
●
Editors
Impact of Climate Change
on Natural Resource
Management
Editors
Bipal K. Jana Mrinmoy Majumder
Jadavpur University, Jadavpur University,
Kolkata, India Kolkata, India
[email protected] [email protected]
ISBN 978-90-481-3580-6 e-ISBN 978-90-481-3581-3
DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3581-3
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010930141
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Preface
Climate change is defined as any long-term change in the statistics of weather over
periods of time that range from decades to millions of years. Climate change may
occur in a specific region, or across the whole world.
The effect of global warming is now predominant in many parts of the world.
Twelve warmest years have occurred in the 1900s among which ten have occurred
between 1987 and 1998. The energy availability, which was increased due to
increase in temperature, had created a ripple effect throughout the Earth system
with positive local, regional, and global feedback on each other to amplify and
accelerate warming (Stewart and Vemuri 2006).
Abnormality in climatic pattern, induced by the accelerated warming, had
started to effect catchment-specific hydrologic cycles. In the last 10 years, floods
have caused more damage than in the previous 30 years. Higher temperatures lead
to a high rate of evaporation and very dry conditions in some areas of the world.
Severe weather events are now more common. The number and strength of hurri-
canes, tornadoes, and other events had increased over the last 15–20 years. As per
IPCC (2007), global climate change is expected to affect the performance of water
resource systems according to current indicators and findings.
The biggest casualty of climate change would be the natural resources. A change
in the climate could change the resource capacity as well as the pattern by which
the resource is used by the adjacent population. The impact on natural resources, if
not controlled by mitigating measures, could lead to extreme situations. But still
natural resources of many places were managed without any specific plans and
according to demands of the users. The ill-managed resources and climate change
could lead any place of the world into the verge of extinction.
For example, rivers can cause floods and also supply water for domestic, indus-
trial, and agricultural uses. But if reservoirs and barrages are built to control the
river flow, the floods may recede but frequency of floods will increase. As climate
change is causing excessive rain in some places and lower than normal in others, a
controlled river may behave abnormally and cause more devastating floods than
ever. The flood in river Koshi in Bihar, India, is a perfect example of mismanage-
ment of natural resources in face of climate change. River Koshi changed its flow
path due to the reservoir built upon the river causing a flood, which in turn
destroyed the livelihood of more than 10,000 people.
v
vi Preface
The book Impact of Climate Change on Natural Resource Management tries to
highlight and quantify the impact of climate change on natural resources like water
and vegetations. The book also tries to show the future status of natural resources
in India if the climate change scenarios predicted by various climate models are
taken as reality. The mitigation measures of climate change were also explained
with simulation of the mitigation measures.
The first part of the book deals with the impact of climate change on water and
forest resource.
For example, in Chapter 1, the impact of carbon dioxide emission on GHG
levels of a metro city is discussed in great detail.
In Chapter 2, the impact of climate change on the availability of virtual water
is estimated with the help of distributed neurogenetic models. The virtual water is
defined as the amount of water used by industries to manufacture their products.
The impacts on virtual water will help to understand the climate change impacts on
industries.
In Chapter 3, the climate change impacts on water availability of a region is
discussed. The climate scenarios are simulated by neuro-genetic models which
stress the impact of forest cover on basin runoff. So, both the impact of climate
change and reduction of forest cover on water availability of the region are
analyzed in this chapter.
In Chapter 4, impact of Climatic Uncertainty on water footprint of two river
basins is estimated. The water footprint is the water which is used to produce
services and products for your benefit. The footprints of water actually delineate
the sharing of water within districts, states, or basins. The sharing of water has
caused many controversies between countries (India and Bangladesh for sharing of
water from River Ganges) and states (Tamil Nadu and Karnataka for sharing
of water from River Cauvery).
In Chapter 5, the concept of sequestration of water was proposed and the impact
of climatic uncertainty on the parameter is analyzed. The Water Sequestration
Capacity of a region could be defined as the amount of water that can be stored
within the vegetative zones of the region which could only be used by the vegetations
of that region. A clear idea of agricultural output from a watershed could be
estimated with the help of this new concept. The chapter tries to predict the impacts
of climate change on the agricultural output of basins with the help of water
sequestration and neuro-genetic models.
In Chapter 6, the impact of desertification, one of the major impact and also
cause of climate change, is simulated to have an idea of desertification impacts on
river runoff. A coupled model was used to predict the output.
In Chapter 7, change in quality of rain water due to rapid urbanization of a metro
city is compared and the authors have tried to establish a relationship between water
quality and urbanization.
In Chapter 8, the concept of Representative Elementary Area has been used to
identify the water-stressed regions of a basin. The stressed region for the future
is also estimated to analyze the impact of climate change on water availability.
The conditions for water stress have been collected from the UNFCC.
Preface vii
Chapters 9–11 is a study which tries to predict the spatial variation of river
runoff, water quality, and water pollution within two river basins of Eastern India
in face of climate change. The simulations were done by neuro-genetic models and
PRECIS climate model.
In Chapter 12, different conditions of a stressed climate is simulated to predict
the runoff of a small tributary of West Bengal.
Chapters 13 and 14 deal with the determination of Evapotranspiration where the
former tries to predict it from stream flow and the later compares the same parameter
for one urban and one metro cities to identify the difference between the two.
The second part of the book tries to analyze the process of mitigating the impacts
by forest resources and building control structures.
As for example, in Chapter 15, the process of Carbon stock accumulation by
plantation is discussed and in Chapter 16, carbon sequestration and carbon econ-
omy are proposed as tools for conservation of the depleting natural resources.
In Chapters 17 and 18, measurement of plant carbon sequestration and soil
carbon stock are discussed so that the results could be used as a benchmark for
proposing urban plantations as a measure to control temperature within 2°C which
is proposed as a measure to counter rising GHG levels of many urban cities.
In Chapters 19 and 20, the utility of the development of reservoirs as a measure
to counter hydrologic extremities caused by climate change is analyzed and
simulated. The former article tries to estimate the behaviors of reservoir with the
help of clusterized neuro-genetic algorithm and to formulate a relationship between
various related parameters and reservoir outflow. The latter article deals with the
utilization of the stored resource to generate electrical energy so that minimum
resource is required for maximum utilization.
A general overview of Hydrologic Models, Artificial Neural Network and
Genetic Algorithm, Climate Models and Remote Sensing and GIS are discussed
in Chapters 21–24. The current trends of the two basins considered in the chapters
about climate change impacts are explained in Chapter 25.
References
IPCC (2007) Climate change 2007: the physical sciences basis, retrieved on http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.
edu/wg1/wg1-report.html. on 30th April, 2009
Stewart P, Le CF, Vemuri SR (2006) (Anticipated) Climate change impacts on Australia, Int J Ecol
Dev 4:W06

Acknowledgments
We are grateful to many persons who have with their cooperation and collaboration
had helped to prepare the book in its present condition. First and foremost we will
like to thank Prof. Dr. Asis Mazumdar, the Coordinator of the Regional Center,
National Afforestation and Eco-Development Board, our work place and Director,
School of Water Resources, Jadavpur University, institution where we finished our
PhD, for his constructive suggestions and innovative ideas which were applied in
the various articles included in this book. We will like to thank, Prof. Pradeep Kr.
Ghosh, Vice Chancellor, Prof. Sidharta Dutta, pro-vice chancellor and Manoj
Mitra, Dean, Faculty of Engineering, Jadavpur University for allowing us to con-
duct our research. Both of us will also like to show our gratitude to Dr. Debasri Roy,
Joint Director, School of Water resources Engineering for her encouragements.
We will like to acknowledge National Commission (NATCOM), United Nation
Framework for Climate Change, Department of Environment, West Bengal and
Government of West Bengal for providing the required economic support. We will
also like to mention the services kindly provided by Central Water Commission
(CWC), Indian Metereological Department (IMD), Central Ground Water Board
(CGWB), Indian Institute of Tropical Metereology (IITM) and West Bengal Forest
Department for providing the necessary database which were extensively used and
helped to find a solution to our objectives. We will like to thank the publishers and
different international and national authorities for granting us the permission to
reproduce their content in our articles.
Both of us also want to proudly state the cooperation received by them from all
the staff members and students of Regional Center, National Afforestation and
Eco-Development Board and School of Water Resources Engineering, Jadavpur
University.
We will be very happy if the errors which we have overlooked can be brought to
our notice so that we can improve the book “Impact of Climate Change on Natural
Resource Management” in the next edition.
Kolkata, West Bengal Bipal Jana
Mrinmoy Majumder
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