Evaluation of Water Resources Management Strategies to Overturn Climate Change Impacts on Lake Karla Watershed

The effects of climate change on meteorology, hydrology and ecology have become a priority area for research and for water management. It is crucial to identify, simulate, evaluate and, finally, adopt water resources management strategies to overturn the impacts of climate change. This paper is dealing with the assessment of climate change impacts on the availability of water resources and the water demands and the evaluation of water resources management strategies in the Lake Karla watershed, central Greece and it is a contribution to the “HYDROMENTOR” research project. The outputs of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling Analysis Global Circulation Model CGCM3 were downscaled using a statistical hybrid method to estimate monthly precipitation and temperature time series for present and future climate periods. The analysis was conducted for two future periods 2030–2050 and 2080–2100 and three SRES scenarios (A2, A1B and B1). The surface water and groundwater have been simulated for present and future climate periods using a modelling system, which includes coupled hydrologic models. Two operational strategies of hydro-technical project development are coupled with three water demand strategies. Overall, eight water management strategies are evaluated for present climate conditions and twenty four water management strategies for future climate conditions have been evaluated. The results show that, under the existing water resources management, the water deficit of Lake Karla watershed is large and it is expected to become critical in the future, even though the impact of climate change on the meteorological parameters is very moderate.