Climate Influenced Challenges of Accessibility to Water by Households Downstream of the Upper Benue River Basin-Nigeria

The study examined climate influenced challenges of accessibility to water by households downstream of the Upper Benue River Basin, Nigeria. Literatures related to the topic being investigated were reviewed. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The population of the study consisted of communities in Adamawa, Gombe, Bauchi and Taraba states. Eight different communities, two in each local government were sampled for the study. Simple random and purposive samplings were used for the study. A total of 351 respondents were selected for the study using Krejcie and Morgan sample size determination. Data analysis was done using frequency tables percentages and mean statistics. The findings of the study showed that climate variability has great impact on water stress and threats to households’ downstream in Upper Benue River basin represented with a mean 3.85 (decrease in the quality and quantity of surface water) as well as 3.43 (drying up of rivers and lakes). The study also revealed that water stress induced by climate variability has a significant effect on household livelihoods represented by 87% of the respondents in the study area. It was also revealed that that households downstream the basin are vulnerable to climate change and households in the study area have development strategies to contend with water stress so as to better their livelihood among which is surface water harvesting (2.78), reducing the number of times dishes are washed (2.96), reducing the quantity of water used for bathing (3.0) among others. The study recommended that stakeholders and the government should make proactive efforts to ensuring that alternative water sources are established in the study area to reduce water stress among the rural populace.

Evapotranspiration estimation considering anthropogenic heat based on remote sensing in urban area

Urbanization influences hydrologic cycle significantly on local,regional even global scale.With urbanization the water resources demand for dense population sharpened,thus it is a great challenge to ensure water supply for some metropolises such as Beijing.Urban area is traditionally considered as the area with lower evapotranspiration(ET) on account of the impervious surface and the lower wind speed.For most remote sensing models,the ET,defined as latent heat in energy budget,is estimated as the difference between net radiation and sensible heat.The sensible heat is generally higher in urban area due to the high surface temperature caused by heat island,therefore the latent heat(i.e.the ET) in urban area is lower than that in other region.We estimated water consumption from 2003 to 2012 in Beijing based on water balance method and found that the annual mean ET in urban area was about 654 mm.However,using Surface Energy Balance System(SEBS) model,the annual mean ET in urban area was only 348 mm.We attributed this inconsistence to the impact of anthropogenic heat and quantified this impact on the basis of the night-light maps.Therefore,a new model SEBS-Urban,coupling SEBS model and anthropogenic heat was developed to estimate the ET in urban area.The ET in urban area of Beijing estimated by SEBS-Urban showed a good agreement with the ET from water balance method.The findings from this study highlighted that anthropogenic heat should be included in the surface energy budget for a highly urbanized area.