Plenary Lecture

Recent Trends and Long-Range Forecasts of Water Resources of North-East Iraq and Climate Change Adaptation Measures

Professor Saleh A. Wasimi
Central Queensland University
Australia
E-mail: s.wasimi@cqu.edu.au

Abstract: To this day Iraqi government relies on regionally aggregated data for water resources planning and management though raw data exists at finer scale, which is utilized in this study to quantify freshwater availability at sub-basin levels for north-east Iraq at monthly and yearly periods that includes the five major tributaries of Tigris River – Khabur, Greater Zab, Lesser Zab, Al-Adhiam and Diyala rivers. For analysis, SWAT model was chosen for simulation and GCM ensembles were used for long-range forecasts. Cursorily, the region has plenty of freshwater, but due to high temporal and spatial variability combined with inadequate infrastructure, water scarcity is widespread. Already, the region has witnessed noticeable shift in climate and water resources regime as recorded in the past three decades. This paper explores how the population are adjusting to that shift, how much more shift we can expect by the end of this century, and what kind of climate change adaptation measures are socio-culturally acceptable by the population. The exploration process features separation of freshwater availability into blue and green waters, climate forecasts with a lead time of about half-a-century to 2049-2069 and about one-century to 2080-2099, and feedback from grass-root level of the government and focus groups as to how the population are adjusting and likely to adjust in the future to climate change.

Brief Biography of the Speaker: Saleh A Wasimi is currently the Campus Leader and Associate Professor at Central Queensland University, Melbourne, Australia. He earned his Bachelor and Master degrees from BUET, Dhaka, Bangladesh and his PhD from The University of Iowa, USA. He has published four books and over one hundred refereed research papers and book chapters. Besides being a full-time academic, he has done consultancy work for a number of organizations. His current research interests are climate change, stochastic processes and data mining. Further details about him can be found from the Central Queensland University website https://handbook.cqu.edu.au/profiles/view/1193.

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