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Anthropogenic Effects on Hydrological Drought and Its Impact on Society in Drylands

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 January 2024) | Viewed by 7116

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Alexandre Cunha Costa

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Engineering and Sustainable Development, University of International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony, Redenção 62790-000, Brazil
Interests: dryland hydrology; droughts and climate-sensitive diseases
Dr. Iran E. Lima Neto

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering, Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza 60440-970, Bra-zil
Interests: water resources management; water pollution and sanitation; water quality modelling; environmental fluid mechanics
Dr. Jörg Dietrich

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Hydrology and Water Resources Management, Leibniz Universität Hannover, D-30419 Hanover, Germany
Interests: agricultural and urban water management; nature–human interface; integrated water resource management
Dr. Pieter van Oel

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, 6708 Wageningen, The Netherlands
Interests: sociohydrology; water resource management; water footprint assessment; water accounting
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Drylands, i.e., water deficit areas, cover over 40% of the Earth’s land surface and are home to more than two billion people. Their area is increasing due to climate change and intensive land cover changes. Recurrent droughts and their longer-term effects on the hydrological cycle, water quality and ecology have been posing different challenges for the populations in drylands, such as in water and food security. Despite the importance of droughts for living conditions in drylands, little is known about their frequency, magnitude, propagation and recovery phases. In fact, dryland environments may not recover from drought, which may lead to permanent land cover change (e.g., desertification) or very long hydrological drought persistence after meteorological droughts, for example.

This lack of knowledge in dryland drought-prone areas hampers any attempt to include drought and its post-phase effects as part of integrated drought management strategies. In this context, it is pivotal to understand how climate change and catchment-scale anthropogenic activities, such as land use and water abstraction, affect the start, development, end and post-phases of hydrological drought, and how human-induced/modified droughts socioeconomically impact dryland populations, through human migration and losses of agricultural production, for example.

In this Special Issue, we aim to gather contributions focusing not only on the anthropogenic effects on hydrological drought and its post-phase in drylands, but also on the impact of human-induced/modified drought on society, highlighting its effects on agricultural production losses, human migration, and any other relevant socioeconomic topics. The possible topics to be addressed include the following:

  1. Drought and/or post-drought phase assessment in drylands;
  2. The impact of climate change on hydro-meteorological droughts and/or post-drought phases;
  3. The impact of land use changes, basin-scale hydraulic infrastructure and/or water abstractions on hydrological drought starts, development, ends and/or post-phases;
  4. The influence of drought and/or post-drought phases on catchment hydrologic connectivity, including the increasing of hillslope/channel transmission losses, loss of hydraulic conductivity between surface water and groundwater, and storage outflow termination in very long droughts;
  5. The modeling of drought-driven hydrologic disconnectivity processes at the catchment scale;
  6. The influence of drought and/or post-drought phases on water quality variability;
  7. Incorporating drought and/or post-drought phase assessment into integrated drought management in drylands;
  8. The effects of human-induced/modified drought on society, including agricultural production losses, human migration and any other relevant socioeconomic topic.

Dr. Alexandre Cunha Costa
Dr. Iran E. Lima Neto
Dr. Jörg Dietrich
Dr. Pieter van Oel
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • drylands
  • droughts
  • meteorological drought
  • hydrological drought
  • hydro-meteorological drought
  • drought re-covery
  • post-drought phase
  • catchment hydrologic connectivity
  • surface water quality
  • anthropogenic effects
  • land use changes
  • climate change
  • assessment of drought severity and impact
  • integrated drought management
  • human migration
  • agricultural production losses

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 2446 KiB  
Article
Impact of Dense Networks of Reservoirs on Streamflows at Dryland Catchments
by Udinart Prata Rabelo, Alexandre C. Costa, Jörg Dietrich, Elahe Fallah-Mehdipour, Pieter Van Oel and Iran Eduardo Lima Neto
Sustainability 2022, 14(21), 14117; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142114117 - 29 Oct 2022
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 1766
Abstract
Small reservoirs play an important role in providing water to rural communities. Increased construction of small reservoirs to mitigate the effects of droughts leads to a High-density Reservoirs Network (HdRN) of small reservoirs, which can potentially modify the streamflows both in dry and [...] Read more.
Small reservoirs play an important role in providing water to rural communities. Increased construction of small reservoirs to mitigate the effects of droughts leads to a High-density Reservoirs Network (HdRN) of small reservoirs, which can potentially modify the streamflows both in dry and wet periods. However, there is a lack of understanding of the interannual behavior of flow retention and the impact of future increases in the number of small reservoirs, mainly for HdRN in dryland catchments. This research aims to determine the possible impact of the increase in the number of small reservoirs on dry hydrological networks, evaluating the annual flows generated at the outlet of a dryland watershed for scenarios with different densities of small reservoirs (number of reservoirs per area). The study area was the Conceição river catchment (3347 km2) in the semiarid of Brazil. The hydrological model of the study area was developed in SWAT. The model obtained appropriate results for daily streamflows, with values of 0.63, 0.81, and 0.53% for NSE, KGE, and PBIAS, respectively. The current density of small reservoirs in the region was estimated at 0.068 reservoirs per square kilometer (res/km2). Eight expansion scenarios were defined for densities between 0.1 res/km2 and 3.0 res/km2. The results showed that the influence of the HdRN on runoff reduction mostly occurs for a probability of exceedance between 1% and 10% of month flows and is very small for months with very high peaks of flow. The reduction in the outlet flow due to the increase in the number of small reservoirs was stronger during dry years (up to 30%) than during wet years (up to 8%), and it tended to increase in years with a consecutive lack of rain (from about 7% in the first year to about 20% in the last year and in the worst scenario), which may intensify the period of extended droughts. This research provides insights about the impact of the increase in the number of small reservoirs on the interannual variability of flow retention, and the understanding of the influence of small reservoirs on runoff reduction may help water resources agencies better prepare for hydrologic extremes (droughts and floods). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Anthropogenic Effects on Hydrological Drought and Its Impact on Society in Drylands)
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30 pages, 5622 KiB  
Article
Anthropic Changes in Land Use and Land Cover and Their Impacts on the Hydrological Variables of the São Francisco River Basin, Brazil
by Carlos Eduardo Sousa Lima, Marx Vinicius Maciel da Silva, Sofia Midauar Godim Rocha and Cleiton da Silva Silveira
Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 12176; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912176 - 26 Sep 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1730
Abstract
The growing impact of human activities on the environment has increased their influence on the planet’s natural cycles, especially in relation to the hydrological cycle of watersheds. The fundamental processes for its water and energy balance have been affected, which influences water availability [...] Read more.
The growing impact of human activities on the environment has increased their influence on the planet’s natural cycles, especially in relation to the hydrological cycle of watersheds. The fundamental processes for its water and energy balance have been affected, which influences water availability and surface streamflow. This study sought to evaluate the anthropogenic impacts on the hydrological cycle of the São Francisco River Basin (SFRB), Brazil, between 1985 and 2015. The study area comprised SFRB and 10 sub-basins for general and specific analyses, respectively. Analyzed data consisted of Land Use and Land Cover (LULC), precipitation, streamflow, and temperature. The methodology incorporated: (i) assessment of LULC dynamics; (ii) trend analysis with the Mann–Kendall method and Sen’s Slope; and (iii) decomposition of total streamflow variation via Budyko’s hypothesis and climate elasticity of streamflow. As a result, it was possible to detect an anthropic modification of SFRB, which is the main component of its streamflow variation, in addition to increased streamflow sensitivity to climate variations. In addition, the divergent behavior in the trends of hydrological variables suggests a change in the streamflow response to precipitation. Therefore, the results allowed us to identify and quantify the impacts of anthropic modifications on the hydrological cycle of the SFRB. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Anthropogenic Effects on Hydrological Drought and Its Impact on Society in Drylands)
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17 pages, 2947 KiB  
Article
Priority of Water Allocation during Drought Periods: The Case of Jaguaribe Metropolitan Inter-Basin Water Transfer in Semiarid Brazil
by Ályson Brayner Sousa Estácio, Maria Aparecida Melo Rocha, Marcílio Caetano de Oliveira, Samiria Maria Oliveira da Silva, Francisco de Assis de Souza Filho and Ticiana Marinho de Carvalho Studart
Sustainability 2022, 14(11), 6876; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14116876 - 4 Jun 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2241
Abstract
Inter-basin water transfers are the root of many conflicts, and water scarcity accentuates them. Those conflicts involve the priority of water use between regions. The Jaguaribe Metropolitan system, located in the Brazilian semiarid region, presents conflicts amongst different water users: irrigated perimeters, industry, [...] Read more.
Inter-basin water transfers are the root of many conflicts, and water scarcity accentuates them. Those conflicts involve the priority of water use between regions. The Jaguaribe Metropolitan system, located in the Brazilian semiarid region, presents conflicts amongst different water users: irrigated perimeters, industry, and households. This paper analyzed the Jaguaribe Metropolitan water transfer during the 2012–2018 drought by considering environmental and societal aspects. Changes in consumption and users’ drought perception were assessed. The results showed that the drought was longer and more severe in the region that provided water (i.e., Jaguaribe) than in the region that received it (i.e., FMR). Jaguaribe irrigators were aware of the beginning of the drought, but it did not result in immediate consumption control. On the other hand, drought perception was delayed in the FMR. The results of this study suggested that the water allocation decision-making process should include not only the water demands but also the characteristics of the drought and how people perceive it. The main strategy for improving water governance seems to be promoting integrated regional planning and the empowerment of participatory management. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Anthropogenic Effects on Hydrological Drought and Its Impact on Society in Drylands)
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