Effects of climate change on water resources of the Büyük Menderes river basin, western Turkey

Temperature and rainfall changes are both significant components of climate change. This study characterizes the effects of climate change on water resources in the Büyük Menderes river basin in western Turkey, based on hydrology, temperature, and rainfall data from the past 45 years (1963-2007). When analyzed with the Mann-Whitney test, the temperature and precipitation time series exhibited obvious step changes with a 5% level of significance. Both the parametric t-test and nonparametric Mann-Kendall statistical test results showed an increasing trend of the temperature. Over the past 45 years, the temperature increased just about 1 °C. The long-term trend of annual precipitation demonstrated a decreasing trend; however, it was not found to be statistically significant. The spatial distribution of the precipitation pattern showed that the precipitation amount had an increasing trend in the 1970s, especially in the Aydın region, with a value of 5.8%. The precipitation amount started to decrease in the 1980s, especially in the Afyon and Uşak regions, with a value of -6.8%. Serious water scarcity began to appear in the 1990s, especially in the Aydın region, with a value of -14.4%. The streamflow of the Çine and Akçay rivers showed a decreasing trend, especially during the period of 1985-1998. The decreasing trend of the streamflow in the tributaries had a strong correlation with changes in temperature and precipitation. An increasing trend in temperature and decreasing trends in precipitation and streamflow in the Büyük Menderes river basin may be interpreted as climate change.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Key words: Climate change, water resources, Büyük Menderes basin

Effects of climate change on water resources of the Büyük Menderes river basin, western Turkey

Keywords:

Key words: Climate change, water resources, Büyük Menderes basin,

PDF

___

Alcamo J, Moreno JM, Nováky B, Bindi M, Corobov R, Devoy RJN, Giannakopoulos C, Martin E, Olesen JE, Shvidenko A (2007) Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Eds. ML Parry, OF Canziani, JP Palutikof, PJ van der Linden, CE Hanson), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 541- 580.
Arnell NW (1999) Climate change and global water resources. Global Environmental Change 9: S31-S49.
Bates BC, Kundzewicz ZW, Wu S, Palutikof JP, Eds. (2008) Climate Change and Water. Technical Paper of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC Secretariat, Geneva, p. 210.
Bou-Zeid E, El Fadel M (2002) Climate change and water resources in Lebanon and the Middle East. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 128: 343-355.
Burn DH, Hag Elnur MA (2002) Detection of hydrologic trends and variability. Journal of Hydrology 255: 107-122.
Chen YN, Xu ZX (2005) Plausible impact of global climate change on water resources in the Tarim River Basin. Science in China Series D: Earth Sciences 48: 65-73.
Chen Y, Li W, Xu C, Hao X (2007) Effects of climate change on water resources in Tarim River Basin, Northwest China. Journal of Environmental Science 19: 488-493.
Christensen JH, Hewitson B, Busuioc A, Chen A, Gao X, Held I, Jones R, Kolli RK, Kwon WT, Laprise R, Rueda MV, Mearns L, Menendez CG, Raisanen J, Rinke A, Sarr A, Whetton P (2007) Regional climate projections. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Eds. S Solomon, D Qin, M Manning, Z Chen, M Marquis, KB Averyt, M Tignor, HL Miller), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 847-940.
Demir İ, Kılıç G, Coşkun M (2007) Türkiye ve bölgesi için PRECIS bölgesel iklim modeli çalışmaları. In: Proceedings of I. Türkiye İklim Değişikliği Kongresi, TİKDEK 2007, İTÜ, İstanbul, Turkey, pp. 252-260.
Fujihara Y, Tanaka K, Nagano T, Watanabe T, Kojiri T (2007) Assessing the impact of climate change on the water resources of the Seyhan river basin, Turkey. In: Proceedings of the International Congress River Basin Management, Vol. 1, Antalya, Turkey, pp. 453-463.
Gadgil A, Dhorde A (2005) Temperature trends in twentieth century at Pune, India. Atmospheric Environment 39: 6550-6556.
Ghahraman B (2006) Time trend in the mean annual temperature of Iran. Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry 30: 439-448.
Gough WA, Cornwell AR, Tsuji LJS (2004) Trends in seasonal sea ice duration in southwestern Hudson Bay. Arctic 57: 299-305.
Helsel DR, Hirsch RM (1992) Statistical Methods in Water Resources. Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Hipel KW, McLeod AI (1994) Time Series Modelling of Water Resources and Environmental Systems. Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Hirsch RM and Slack JR (1984) Non-parametric trend test for seasonal data with serial dependence. Water Resources Research 20: 727-732.
IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Eds. ML Parry, OF Canziani, JP Palutikof, PJ van der Linden, CE Hanson). Cambridge University Press, UK.
Kahya E, Kalaycı S (2004) Trend analysis of streamflow in Turkey. Journal of Hydrology 289: 128-144.
Loukas A, Vasiliades L, Tzabiras J (2007) Evaluation of climate change on drought impulses in Thessaly, Greece. European Water 17/18: 17-28.
Mann HB (1945) Nonparametric test against trend. Econometrica 13: 245-259.
Mengu GP, Sensoy S, Akkuzu E (2008) Effects of global climate change on agriculture and water resources. In: Proceedings of Third International Conference BALWOIS, Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia, pp. 1-10.
Mizyed N (2009) Impacts of climate change on water resources availability and agricultural water demand in the West Bank. Water Resources Management 23: 2015-2029.
Ozkul S (2009) Assessment of climate change effects in Aegean river basins: the case of Gediz and Buyuk Menderes Basins. Climatic Change: doi 10.1007/s10584-009-9589-z.
Önöz B, Bayazıt M (2003) The power of statistical tests for trend detection. Turkish J Eng Env Sci 27: 247-251.
Sensoy S, Demircan M, Alan I (2008) Trends in Turkey climate extreme indices from 1971 to 2004. In: Proceedings of Third International Conference BALWOIS, Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia, pp. 1-9.
Shiklomanov IA (2003) World Water Resources at the Beginning of the 21stCentury. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Trenberth KE, Dai AG, Rasmussen RM, Parsons DB (2003) The changing character of precipitation. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 84: 1205-1217
Xu ZX, Takeuchi K, Ishidaira H (2003) Monotonic trend and step changes in Japanese precipitation. Journal of Hydrology 279: 144-150.
Zhang X, Aguilar E, Sensoy S, Melkonyan H, Tagiyeva U, Ahmed N, Kutaladze N, Rahimzadeh F, Taghipour A, Hantosh TH, Albert P, Semawi M, Ali MK, Al-Shabibi MHS, Al-Oulan Z, Zatari T, Khelet IAD, Hamoud S, Sagir R, Demircan M, Eken M, Adiguzel M, Alexander L, Peterson TC, Wallis T (2005) Trends in Middle East climate extreme indices from 1950 to 2003. Journal of Geophysical Research 110: doi 10.1029/ 2008JD011010.