Abstract:

Climate change is generating a reduction in available water resources and an increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts. These negative effects are expected to be exacerbated over the coming decades, especially in Mediterranean countries. Therefore, it is necessary to teach students to analyse the effects of droughts on water resource management and to mitigate their impacts on water security, water quality and the environment.

This work details practical lessons whose objective is to learn master’s students to identify drought situations, quantify water scarcity indicators and assess the effects of droughts on reliability of water demands and fulfilment of environmental flows in real cases studies within Spanish river basins. The practical lessons were included in the syllabus of one of the subjects of the Master in Hydraulic Engineering and Environment of the Polytechnic University of Valencia: Water Resources Systems.

The goal of the subject is to learn advanced knowledges related to water resources planning and management, covering didactic units such as water balances in river basins, exploratory analysis, water resource evaluation, water demands, operating rules, optimization of water resource systems, ecological flows, and drought management, among others.

The proposed practical lessons related to drought management comprise the analysis of historical series to identify drought periods based on the precipitation, the input river flow to reservoirs and the volume of water stored in reservoir; the assessment of the water scarcity indicators proposed in the Special Drought Plans of each River Basin Agency in Spain, and the simulation of the drought impacts on water security and the environment with the Decision Support System AQUATOOL (Andreu et al., 1996; Solera et al., 2015).

These practical activities have been carried out during three academic years so far and have demonstrated to be helpful to improve the learning process of the students. They have shown great interest in solving real problems related to water resources management during drought episodes in Spain, especially in areas such as Andalusia or Catalonia, where severe periods of drought have taken place in recent years.

Acknowledgements:
This work was partly funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 through research contract IJC2019-038848-I (Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación program).

References:
[1] Andreu, J., Capilla, J., & Sanchís, E. (1996). AQUATOOL, a generalized decision-support system for water-resources planning and operational management. Journal of Hydrology, 177(3-4), 269-291.
[2] Solera, A., Paredes-Arquiola, J., & Andreu, J. (2015). AQUATOOL+, Manual de usuario v1.0. Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain.

Keywords:

Water resources, droughts, project-based learning, master studies.