《WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH》杂志刊登的“美国225座大城市水资源的可用量及其脆弱性”

作  者：Padowski, JC (Padowski, Julie C.) ; Jawitz, JW (Jawitz, James W.)

刊  物：《WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH》,2012年,48卷, W12529

关键词：气候变化；人口增长；年平均径流；资源；影响；美国；可持续性；指标；挑战；管理

摘要：本研究针对美国225个人口超过10万的城市提出了对其水资源可用量及其脆弱性进行定量评价的方法。在这套方法中，评价水资源可用量及其脆弱性的依据不仅仅是区域可更新的径流量，同时也包括了城市系统通过水利基础设施而抽提、调入以及存储的水量。这些水源是城市供水系统重要的水力组成部分，但通常在缺水状况评估中却不考虑这些水源。。本文将这种基于城市水力系统的评估方法与传统的只考虑当地可更新径流量的评价方法进行了对比分析。在评价过程中，考虑了城市水力系统之后城市的平均可用水量会有所增加，从而使得处于水短缺危险中的美国民众所占的比例大幅度下降，仅为17%，而之前仅考虑可更新径流量的评价手段进行评价时，这个数值为47%。水资源的脆弱性评价通常是基于小流量条件下进行的，研究发现仅考虑径流量来评价水资源脆弱性影响的人口比例为66%，而考虑整个城市水力系统的评价水资源脆弱性影响的人口比例为54%，两者的相差不大。考虑城市水力系统的方法对缺水程度进行评估时，受影响人口数量会大量增长，这样可以更好地协调人们认为美国水资源丰富的观念和广泛的水资源短缺之间的矛盾。此外，本研究中提出的一些城市水资源脆弱性计算方法都经过了媒体报道的验证，结果显示，考虑城市水力系统的水资源脆弱性评估与报刊报道的城市缺水事件的频率相关性很好，而传统的考虑径流的方法对脆弱性进行评估与报刊报道的城市缺水事件的频率的相关性不明显，表明基于城市水力系统的评估方法将为人们认识和理解城市缺水问题的特征和严重程度提供一种更好的背景和框架。

Water availability and vulnerability of 225 large cities in the United States

Authors：Padowski, JC (Padowski, Julie C.) ; Jawitz, JW (Jawitz, James W.)

Journal：WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH ,2012,48: W12529

Key words：CLIMATE-CHANGE; POPULATION-GROWTH; ANNUAL STREAMFLOW; RESOURCES; IMPACTS; US; SUSTAINABILITY; INDICATORS; CHALLENGES; MANAGEMENT

Abstract：This study presents a quantitative national assessment of urban water availability and vulnerability for 225 U.S. cities with population greater than 100,000. Here, the urban assessments account for not only renewable water flows, but also the extracted, imported, and stored water that urban systems access through constructed infrastructure. These sources represent important hydraulic components of the urban water supply, yet are typically excluded from water scarcity assessments. Results from this hydraulic-based assessment were compared to those obtained using a more conventional method that estimates scarcity solely based on local renewable flows. The inclusion of hydraulic components increased the mean availability to cities, leading to a significantly lower portion of the total U. S. population considered "at risk" for water scarcity (17%) than that obtained from the runoff method (47%). Water vulnerability was determined based on low-flow conditions, and smaller differences were found for this metric between at-risk populations using the runoff (66%) and hydraulic-based (54%) methods. The large increase in the susceptible population between the scarcity measures evaluated using the hydraulic method may better reconcile the seeming contradiction in the United States between perceptions of natural water abundance and widespread water scarcity. Additionally, urban vulnerability measures developed here were validated using a media text analysis. Vulnerability assessments that included hydraulic components were found to correlate with the frequency of urban water scarcity reports in the popular press while runoff-based measures showed no significant correlation, suggesting that hydraulic-based assessments provide better context for understanding the nature and severity of urban water scarcity issues.

原文链接：http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012WR012335/full