The research project
The past four years have made it clear that we are insufficiently prepared for droughts and water scarcity. A proactive, ecosystem-based approach is needed to increase water availability. The role of blue-green measures in preventing or delaying a hydrological drought is essential here. In practice, understanding where and how best to implement blue-green solutions has proven challenging. Little is known about 1) the effectiveness (or side-effects) of these measures locally and at basin scale and 2) how many such measures are needed to reduce drought risk to an acceptable level. Most initiatives are driven from a sectoral perspective, leading to missed synergies and opportunities. This leads to fragmented visions and implementations, and ultimately to a non-resilient water system.
TURQUOISE therefore aims to develop a decision support framework to increase the effectiveness and implementation rate of blue-green measures. The decision support framework consists of a set of indicators, targets, design guidelines, a techno-economic impact assessment and the identification of policy mechanisms for implementation. The framework allows quantifying how robust a geographical area is with respect to drought, how much the robustness needs to be improved to reduce the risk of water scarcity to an acceptable level and what blue-green investments are needed to achieve certain objectives.
The four blue-green solutions on which TURQUOISE focuses are:
- restoration of (former) wetland depressions
- controlled hydraulic (drainage) systems
- infiltration pools in fields
- infiltration reservoirs with active river supply for irrigation and groundwater recharge
The decision support framework is being tested in pilot areas that we have identified together with stakeholders.
Rationale of the research
The droughts of the past 4 years have had an enormous impact on agriculture, biodiversity households and industry. A series of multi-actor focus groups, drought commission meetings and recent sprouting of drought-related evaluations and initiatives made it clear that we need to be better prepared and need to minimize the occurrence of hydrological droughts. The forthcoming reactive, emergency-driven decision framework to water scarcity is developing a water allocation decision framework. The socio-economic impact assessment and data on water availability already revealed that re-allocation of available water is not possible without hard sociological, economical or ecological consequences. With the latter being less well quantified and often drawing the short straw in water allocation. Focus groups repeatedly highlighted the need of a proactive, ecosystem-based approach to increase natural water availability. The general idea is that we need to make better use of periods with precipitation surplus to overcome periods of precipitation deficit by storing water in soils, wetlands, surface water and groundwater. After all, if groundwater levels and flow rates remain adequate, even under a meteorological drought, a water capture and/or irrigation ban does not have to be imposed.
In practice, it has proved to be challenging to understand how to best plan, implement and scale blue-green solutions. Little is known about the effectiveness (or side-effects) of these measures on a larger scale: a lack of knowledge that greatly hampers a broad implementation of these much needed measures
Research objectives
TURQUOISE therefore aims to co-create and field test a decision-support framework to facilitate planning and increase the implementation rate of blue-green adaptation strategies.
Specific objectives to achieve the overall objective are:
1. Develop an indicator-based instrument to quantify the water availability and ecohydrological impacts on different scales and under current and future climatic conditions
2. Quantify the hydrological and ecological impact of blue-green measures at 4 pilot sites by combining in-situ monitoring (local scale) and catchment-scale hydro-ecological modelling
3. Quantify the investment needs and cost-effectiveness of combinations of blue-green measures to achieve robustness targets for the 4 pilot cases
4. Co-create and test mechanisms to accelerate the implementation rate of blue-green measures
5. Integrate the developed instruments, knowledge and data into a decision-support framework
Work packages
· WP1: Empirical research on blue-green measures
· WP2: Hydro-ecological impact of blue-green measures at catchment scale
· WP3: Economic benefits of blue-green measures
· WP4: Leverages to facilitate the implementation of blue-green measures
· WP5: Decision-support framework for blue-green investments
· WP6: Project coordination, management and valorization