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Balancing-out floods and droughts: opportunities to utilize floodwater harvesting and groundwater storage for agricultural development in Thailand

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Title Balancing-out floods and droughts: opportunities to utilize floodwater harvesting and groundwater storage for agricultural development in Thailand
 
Creator Pavelic, Paul
Srisuk, K.
Saraphirom, P.
Nadee, S.
Pholkern, K.
Chusanathas, S.
Munyou, S.
Tangsutthinon, T.
Intarasut, T.
Smakhtin, Vladimir U.
 
Subject flooding
water harvesting
drought
groundwater
water storage
aquifers
water scarcity
agricultural development
river basins
surface water
economic analysis
 
Description Thailand's naturally high seasonal endowment of water resources brings with it the regularly experienced problems associated with floods during the wet season and droughts during the dry season. Downstream-focused engineering solutions that address flooding are vital, but do not necessarily capture the potential for basin-scale improvements to water security, food production and livelihood enhancement. Managed aquifer recharge, typically applied to annual harvesting of wet season flows in dry climates, can also be applied to capture, store and recover episodic extreme flood events in humid environments. In the Chao Phraya River Basin it is estimated that surplus flows recorded downstream above a critical threshold could be harvested and recharged within the shallow alluvial aquifers in a distributed manner upstream of flood prone areas without significantly impacting existing large-medium storages or the Gulf and deltaic ecosystems. Capturing peak flows approximately 1 year in four by dedicating around 200 km2 of land to groundwater recharge would reduce the magnitude of flooding and socio-economic impacts and generate around USD 250 M/year in export earnings for smallholder rainfed farmers through dry season cash cropping without unduly compromising the demands of existing water users. It is proposed that farmers in upstream riparian zones be co-opted as flood harvesters and thus contribute to improved floodwater management through simple water management technologies that enable agricultural lands to be put to higher productive use. Local-scale site suitability and technical performance assessments along with revised governance structures would be required. It is expected that such an approach would also be applicable to other coastal-discharging basins in Thailand and potentially throughout the Asia region.
 
Date 2012-11
2014-06-13T14:47:31Z
2014-06-13T14:47:31Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Pavelic, Paul; Srisuk, K.; Saraphirom, P.; Nadee, S.; Pholkern, K.; Chusanathas, S.; Munyou, S.; Tangsutthinon, T.; Intarasut, T.; Smakhtin, Vladimir. 2012. Balancing-out floods and droughts: opportunities to utilize floodwater harvesting and groundwater storage for agricultural development in Thailand. Journal of Hydrology, 470-471:55-64. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2012.08.007
0022-1694
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/40381
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2012.08.007
 
Language en
 
Rights Copyrighted; all rights reserved
Limited Access
 
Publisher Elsevier BV