Millennium Ecosystem Assessment scenario drivers (1970–2050): Climate and hydrological alterations

[1] This study was carried out to support and enhance a series of global studies assessing contemporary and future changes in nutrient export from watersheds (Global Nutrient Export from Watersheds (NEWS)). Because hydrography is one of the most important drivers in nutrient transport, it was essential to establish how climatic changes and direct human activities (primarily irrigation and reservoir operations) affect the hydrological cycle. Contemporary and future hydrography was established by applying a modified version of a global water balance and transport model (WBMplus) driven by present and future climate forcing, as described in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment scenarios (1970–2050). WBMplus represents a major upgrade to previous WBM implementations by incorporating irrigational water uptake and reservoir operations in a single modeling framework. Contemporary simulations were carried out by using both observed climate forcings from the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia (CRU) data sets and from Global Circulation Model (GCM) simulations that are comparable to the future simulations from the same GCM forcings. Future trends in three key human activities (land use, irrigation, and reservoirs operation for hydropower) were taken from the Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment (IMAGE). The reservoir operation required establishing a realistic distribution of future reservoirs since the IMAGE model provided only the hydropower potentials for the different future scenarios.

[1]  John A. Harrison,et al.  Global nitrogen and phosphate in urban wastewater for the period 1970 to 2050 , 2009 .

[2]  Charles J Vörösmarty,et al.  Global system of rivers: Its role in organizing continental land mass and defining land‐to‐ocean linkages , 2000 .

[3]  Wolfgang Grabs,et al.  High‐resolution fields of global runoff combining observed river discharge and simulated water balances , 2002 .

[4]  Charles J Vörösmarty,et al.  Potential evaporation functions compared on US watersheds: Possible implications for global-scale water balance and terrestrial ecosystem modeling , 1998 .

[5]  Carolien Kroeze,et al.  Global river nutrient export: A scenario analysis of past and future trends , 2010 .

[6]  B. Bates,et al.  Climate change and water. , 2008 .

[7]  Charles J Vörösmarty,et al.  The significance of local water resources captured in small reservoirs for crop production – A global-scale analysis , 2010 .

[8]  Dennis P. Lettenmaier,et al.  Effects of irrigation on the water and energy balances of the Colorado and Mekong river basins , 2006 .

[9]  E. Rastetter,et al.  Continental scale models of water balance and fluvial transport: An application to South America , 1989 .

[10]  R. Rosenberg,et al.  Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems , 2008, Science.

[11]  A. Witze,et al.  Energy alternatives: Electricity without carbon , 2008, Nature.

[12]  D. Conley.  Terrestrial ecosystems and the global biogeochemical silica cycle , 2002 .

[13]  Changsheng Li,et al.  Bi-criteria evaluation of the MIKE SHE model for a forested watershed on the South Carolina coastal plain , 2010 .

[14]  Naota Hanasaki,et al.  A reservoir operation scheme for global river routing models , 2006 .

[15]  S. Seitzinger,et al.  Global distribution and sources of dissolved inorganic nitrogen export to the coastal zone: Results from a spatially explicit, global model , 2005 .

[16]  Charles J Vörösmarty,et al.  Intercomparison of Methods for Calculating Potential Evaporation in Regional and Global Water Balance Models , 1996 .

[17]  L. S. Pereira,et al.  Crop evapotranspiration : guidelines for computing crop water requirements , 1998 .

[18]  A. Bouwman,et al.  Estimation of global river transport of sediments and associated particulate C, N, and P , 2005 .

[19]  Brian C. O'Neill,et al.  Changes in ecosystem services and their drivers across the scenarios , 2005 .

[20]  D. Lettenmaier,et al.  Anthropogenic impacts on continental surface water fluxes , 2006 .

[21]  T. Wigley,et al.  Implications for climate and sea level of revised IPCC emissions scenarios , 1992, Nature.

[22]  Andreas Schumann,et al.  Global irrigation water demand: Variability and uncertainties arising from agricultural and climate data sets , 2008 .

[23]  M. Sadek,et al.  Evaporation from the reservoir of the High Aswan Dam, Egypt: A new comparison of relevant methods with limited data , 1997 .

[24]  Balázs M. Fekete,et al.  Sensitivity of Annual Evaporation to Soil and Root Properties in Two Models of Contrasting Complexity , 2003 .

[25]  P. Jones,et al.  Representing Twentieth-Century Space-Time Climate Variability. Part II: Development of 1901-96 Monthly Grids of Terrestrial Surface Climate , 2000 .

[26]  S. Seitzinger,et al.  Global patterns and sources of dissolved organic matter export to the coastal zone: Results from a spatially explicit, global model , 2005 .

[27]  MayorgaEmilio,et al.  Global Nutrient Export from WaterSheds 2 (NEWS 2) , 2010 .

[28]  Josette Garnier,et al.  River basin nutrient delivery to the coastal sea : Assessing its potential to sustain new production of non-siliceous algae , 2007 .

[29]  R. Haas,et al.  Potentials and prospects for renewable energies at global scale , 2008 .

[30]  J. Holden,et al.  The storage and aging of continental runoff in large reservoir systems of the world , 1997 .

[31]  Carolien Kroeze,et al.  Global Nutrient Export from WaterSheds 2 (NEWS 2): Model development and implementation , 2010, Environ. Model. Softw..

[32]  C. Vörösmarty,et al.  Reconstructing 20 th century global hydrography : a contribution to the Global Terrestrial Network-Hydrology ( GTN-H ) , 2010 .

[33]  W. Reid,et al.  Millennium Ecosystem Assessment , 2005 .

[34]  Petra Döll,et al.  Global modeling of irrigation water requirements , 2002 .

[35]  Slobodan P. Simonovic,et al.  Sustainable Reservoir Development and Management , 1998 .

[36]  John A. Harrison,et al.  Dissolved inorganic phosphorus export to the coastal zone: Results from a spatially explicit, global model , 2005 .

[37]  John A. Harrison,et al.  Sources and delivery of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus to the coastal zone: An overview of Global Nutrient Export from Watersheds (NEWS) models and their application , 2005 .

[38]  A. Bouwman,et al.  Human alteration of the global nitrogen and phosphorus soil balances for the period 1970–2050 , 2009 .

[39]  C. Vörösmarty,et al.  Global water resources: vulnerability from climate change and population growth. , 2000, Science.

[40]  P. Jones,et al.  REPRESENTING TWENTIETH CENTURY SPACE-TIME CLIMATE VARIABILITY. , 1998 .

[41]  A. McGuire,et al.  Global climate change and terrestrial net primary production , 1993, Nature.