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Ferrari M.R., J.R. Miller, and G.L. Russell, 1999: Modeling the effect of wetlands, flooding, and irrigation on river flow: Application to the Aral Sea. Water Resources Res., 35, 1869-1876.
As the world's population continues to increase, additional stress is placed on water resources. This stress, coupled with future uncertainties regarding climate change, makes arid and semiarid regions particularly vulnerable. One example is the Aral Sea where the freshwater inflow, which is dominated by snowmelt runoff, has decreased significantly since the expansion of extensive irrigation in the 1960s. The purpose of this paper is to use a river routing scheme from a global climate model to examine the flow of the Amu Dar'ya River into the Aral Sea. The river routing scheme is modified to include groundwater flow, flooding, and evaporation losses in the river's wetlands and floodplain and anthropogenic withdrawals for irrigation. A set of scenarios is designed to test the sensitivity of river flow to the inclusion of these modifications into the river routing scheme. When riverine wetlands and floodplains are present, the river flow is reduced significantly and is similar to the observed flow. In addition, the model results show that it is essential to incorporate human diversions to represent accurately the inflow to the Aral Sea, and they also indicate potential management strategies that might be appropriate to maintain a balance between inflow to the sea and upstream diversions for irrigation.
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