Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:46:02.915Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Flooding Risk in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin under Global Change

from Part I - Water-Related Risks under Climate Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2022

By
Xiaobo Yun ,
Jie Wang ,
Huan Wu ,
Binod Baniya ,
Hui Lu ,
Siao Sun ,
Ximeng Xu ,
Xingcai Liu  and
Qiuhong Tang
Edited by
Qiuhong Tang  and
Guoyong Leng
Qiuhong Tang
Affiliation:
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
Guoyong Leng
Affiliation:
Oxford University Centre for the Environment
Get access

Summary

The Lancang-Mekong River Basin (LMRB) is Asia's most important transboundary river. The precipitation-dependent agriculture and the world's largest inland fishery in the basin feed more than 70 million people. Floods are the main natural disasters which pose a serious threat to the local agriculture and human life. In the future, climate change will affect the streamflow and lead to changes in flood events. Based on the GMDF and GCM data, the SPI and the VIC model were used to assess the impact of climate change on streamflow and flood events during the historical (1985–2016) and future periods (2020–2050) in the LMRB. The results show that the LMRB will become more humid in the future and annual precipitation will change from about -2 to 6 per cent under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. In the future, this basin should experience a higher flood risk, with more flood events and a relative increase in the flood peak and frequency reaching up to +15 and +58 per cent, respectively. This study contributes to improve our understanding of the role of climate change on streamflow and flood events and provides a scientific reference for the development of local water resources management in the LMRB.

Keywords

Climate changeStandardized Precipitation IndexVariable Infiltration Capacity modelFloodthe Lancang-Mekong River Basin
Type
Chapter
Information
Climate Risk and Sustainable Water Management , pp. 29 - 46
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alfieri, L., Bisselink, B., Dottori, F., et al. (2017). Global projections of river flood risk in a warmer world. Earth’s Future 5(2): 171–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cronin, R. (2009). Mekong dams, and the perils of peace. Survival 51(6): 147–160.Google Scholar
Dang, T. D., Chowdhury, A. M. F. K., & Galelli, S. (2020). On the representation of water reservoir storage and operations in large-scale hydrological models: Implications on model parameterization and climate change impact assessments. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 24(1): 397–416.Google Scholar
Defries, R. S., and Townshend, J. R. G. (1999). Global land cover characterization from satellite data: From research to operational implementation? Global Ecology and Biogeography 8(5): 367–379.Google Scholar
FAO. (2012). ISRIC-World Soil Information, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISSCAS), Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC), Harmonized World Soil Database, v1.21. Available from www.fao.org/soils-portal/soil-survey/soil-maps-and-databases/harmonized-world-soil-database-v12/en/ (Last accessed March 2020).Google Scholar
Guo, J. L., Hong, Y. L., Leung, L. R., et al. (2014). Links between flood frequency and annual water balance behaviors: A basis for similarity and regionalization. Water Resources Research 50(2): 937–953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamman, J. J., Nijssen, B., Bohn, T. J., Gergel, D. R., & Mao, Y. (2018). The Variable Infiltration Capacity model version 5 (VIC-5): Infrastructure improvements for new applications and reproducibility. Geoscientific Model Development 11(8): 3481–3496.Google Scholar
Hirsch, R. M., & Archfield, S. A. (2015). Flood trends: Not higher but more often. Nature Climate Change 5(3): 198–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hortle, K. G. (2007). MRC Technical Paper No. 16: Consumption and the Yield of Fish and Other Aquatic Animals from the Lower Mekong Basin. Mekong River Commission.Google Scholar
Li, R. C. (2005). Flood control history in the Netherlands. Water Encyclopedia 2: 524–526.Google Scholar
Liang, X., Lettenmaier, D. P., Wood, E. F., & Burges, S. J. (1994). A simple hydrologically based model of land surface water and energy fluxes for general circulation models. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 99(D7): 14415–14428.Google Scholar
Lu, X. X., Li, S. Y., Kummu, M., Padawangi, R., & Wang, J. (2014). Observed changes in the water flow at Chiang Saen in the lower Mekong: Impacts of Chinese dams? Quaternary International 336(1): 145–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luo, X., Wu, W. Q., He, D. M., Li, Y., & Ji, X. (2019). Hydrological simulation using TRMM and CHIRPS precipitation estimates in the lower Lancang-Mekong river basin. Chinese Geographical Science 20(1): 13–25.Google Scholar
Mckee, T. B., Doesken, N. J., & Kleist, J. (1993). The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. In Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, January 1993, California.Google Scholar
Mohammed, I. N., Bolten, J. D., Srinivasan, R., et al. (2018). Ground and satellite based observation datasets for the Lower Mekong River Basin. Data in Brief 21: 2020–2027.Google Scholar
Nash, J. E., & Sutcliffe, J. V. (1970). River flow forecasting through conceptual models part I – A discussion of principles. Journal of Hydrology 10(3): 282–290.Google Scholar
Pandey, S., Byerlee, D. R., Dawe, D., et al. (eds.) (2010). Rice in the Global Economy: Strategic Research and Policy Issues for Food Security. The Philippines: The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).Google Scholar
Pech, S., & Sunada, K. (2008). Population growth and natural-resources pressures in the Mekong River Basin. AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 37(3): 219–224.Google Scholar
Potapov, P., Tyukavina, A., Turubanova, S., et al. (2019). Annual continuous fields of woody vegetation structure in the Lower Mekong region from 2000–2017 Landsat time-series. Remote Sensing of Environment 232: 111278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rees, H. G., & Collins, D. N. (2006). Regional differences in response of flow in glacier-fed Himalayan rivers to climatic warming. Hydrological Processes 20(10): 2157–2169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheffield, J., Goteti, G., & Wood, E. F. (2006). Development of a 50-year high-resolution global dataset of meteorological forcings for land surface modeling. Journal of Climate 19(13): 3088–3111.Google Scholar
Sheffield, J., Wood, E. F., & Roderick, M. L. (2012). Little change in global drought over the past 60 years. Nature 491(7424): 435–438.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smajgl, A., Toan, T. Q., Nhan, D. K., et al. (2015). Responding to rising sea levels in the Mekong Delta. Nature Climate Change 5(2): 167–174.Google Scholar
Sohail, A. (2012). Mapping landcover/landuse and coastline change in the Eastern Mekong Delta (Viet Nam) from 1989 to 2002 using remote sensing. Master’s Thesis. Urban Planning & Environment. Available from www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A563356&dswid=848 (Last accessed 31 August 2021).Google Scholar
Tatsumi, K., & Yamashiki, Y. (2015). Effect of irrigation water withdrawals on water and energy balance in the Mekong River Basin using an improved VIC land surface model with fewer calibration parameters. Agricultural Water Management 159: 92–106.Google Scholar
Thomaz, S. M., Bini, L. M., & Bozelli, R. L. (2007). Floods increase similarity among aquatic habitats in river-floodplain systems. Hydrobiologia 579(1): 1–13.Google Scholar
Valbo-Jørgensen, J., Coates, D., & Hortle, K. (2009). Fish diversity in the Mekong River Basin. In Campbell, I. C. (ed.), The Mekong Biophysical Environment of an International River Basin (pp. 161–196). Cambridge, MA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ward, P. J., Jongman, B., Aerts, J. C. J. H., et al. (2017). A global framework for future costs and benefits of river-flood protection in urban areas. Nature Climate Change 7(9): 642–646.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ward, P. J., Jongman, B., Weiland, F. C. S., et al. (2013). Assessing flood risk at the global scale: Model setup, results, and sensitivity. Environmental Research Letters 8(4): 44019.Google Scholar
Wilks, D. S. (1999). Interannual variability and extreme-value characteristics of several stochastic daily precipitation models. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 93(3): 153–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, H., Svoboda, M. D., Hayes, M. J., Wilhite, D. A., & Wen, F. (2007). Appropriate application of the standardized precipitation index in arid locations and dry seasons. International Journal of Climatology 27(1): 65–79.Google Scholar
Yun, X. B., Tang, Q. H., Wang, J., et al. (2020). Impacts of climate change and reservoir operation on streamflow and flood characteristics in the Lancang-Mekong river basin. Journal of Hydrology 590: 125472.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×