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Impact of reservoir operation and climate change on the hydrological regime of the Sesan and Srepok Rivers in the Lower Mekong Basin

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Abstract

The transboundary Sesan and Srepok sub-basins (2S) are the “hot-spot” areas for reservoir development in the Lower Mekong region, with 12 reservoirs built in the Vietnam territory. This study examines the impacts of reservoir operations in Vietnam and projected climate change on the downstream hydrologic regime of the 2S Rivers by jointly applying the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) models. Different scenarios of reservoir operation are considered and simulated to assess their impact on annual, seasonal, and monthly flow regimes under maximum hydropower capacity generation with and without taking into account the minimum flow requirement downstream near the Vietnam border with Cambodia. The precipitation and temperature projections from the high-resolution regional climate model HadGEM3-RA under two Representative Concentration Pathways, 4.5 and 8.5, of HadGEM2-AO are used as future climate change scenarios for the impact assessment. The study results show that reservoir operation leads to an increase in the dry season stream flows and a decrease in the wet season stream flows. The monthly flow regime exhibits considerable changes for both the Sesan and Srepok Rivers but with different magnitudes and patterns of increase and decrease. Climate change is likely to induce considerable changes in stream flows, though these changes are comparatively lower than those caused by reservoir operation. Climate change is likely to have both counterbalancing and reinforcing effects over the impact of reservoir operation, reducing changes during dry season but increasing changes in most of the other months.

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Acknowledgements

This research was carried out under the funding of the Post-Graduate Research Programme on Adaptation to Climate Change (PRoACC) with special focus on the Mekong River Basin—Phase 2, with the research facility under the DGIS (Dutch Development Cooperation)-UNESCO-IHE Programmatic Cooperation (DUPC). The authors wish to thank PRoACC team members for their support and useful insights.

We acknowledge the CORDEX-East Asia Databank, which is responsible for the CORDEX dataset, and we thank the National Institute of Meteorological Research (NIMR), three universities in the Republic of Korea (Seoul National Univ., Yonsei Univ., Kongju National Univ.), and other cooperative research institutes in East Asia region for producing and making available their model output.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Thuy Loi University, Hanoi, Vietnam

    Le An Ngo

  2. UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, P.O. Box 3015, 2601, DA, Delft, The Netherlands

    Ilyas Masih, Yong Jiang & Wim Douven

Authors
  1. Le An Ngo
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  2. Ilyas Masih
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  3. Yong Jiang
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  4. Wim Douven
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Le An Ngo.

Additional information

This article is part of a Special Issue on “Climatic Change and Development in the Mekong River Basin” edited by Jaap Evers and Assela Pathirana.

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Ngo, L.A., Masih, I., Jiang, Y. et al. Impact of reservoir operation and climate change on the hydrological regime of the Sesan and Srepok Rivers in the Lower Mekong Basin. Climatic Change 149, 107–119 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1875-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1875-y

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