Effect of Climate Change on Water Balance of Lower Ogun River Basin
Keywords:
Climate, water balance, basin, Ogun, aridity
Abstract
The lower Ogun River is highly vulnerable to climate change due to its geographic location at the southern edge of western Nigeria and water management planners are facing considerable uncertainties on future demand and availability of water. This study was carried out to investigate the effect of climate change on water balance of lower Ogun River basin. The procedure of Ayoade (1976) water balance bookkeeping model was followed in computation. The temperature and water balance components were compared using descriptive statistics. The result showed that climate change influences the water balance components: rainfall, evapotranspiration, runoff and change in storage. Recurrent dry spells were encountered in the years 1988, 1990, 1998, 2006 and 2009. However, in the recent years increasing rainfall amount have been observed to cause flood that displaces most inhabitance of the lower basin area. Rainfall variability, land degradation and desertification are some of the factors that may also contribute to variation in the component of the hydrologic cycle in the river basin. The recurrent dry spells and flood encountered in the basin represented a particularly trying episode for the area, with massive losses of agricultural production and its consequence on human lives and domestic economies. Thus, climate change may become a great obstacle to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to which the Government of Nigeria is committed.References
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ecological zones in Nigeria agriculture. J. Environ. Ext., 2(1):31-48.
Ayoade, J.O. 1976. On Climate water budgeting procedures. Nigerian geographical journal. 19 (2): 157-177.
Bello, N. J. 1997. Evaluation of reference – crop evapotranspiration by empirical method for predicting consumptive water use of a crop in a tropical wet-dry climate. Indian Journal of Agricultural Science 67 (6): 269-270.
CILSS, 2004. www.cilssnet.org/anglais/index_anglais.htm.
Deressa, T., Hassan, R. and Poonyth, D. 2005. Measuring the Impact of ClimateChange
on South African Agriculture: The Case of Sugar Cane Growing Regions. Agrekon;
44 (4): 524-542.
Fox, P., and Rockström, J., 2003. Supplemental irrigation for dry-spell mitigation of rainfed agriculture in the Sahel. Agricultural Water Management 61: 29–50
Houghton, J. T.; Ding, Y.; Griggs, D. J.; Noguer, M.; van der Linden, P. J.; Dai, X.; Maskell, K.; and Johnson, C. A., ed., Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press.
IPCC. (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Impacts, adaptations and mitigation of climate change: Scientific-technical analyses. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 1996.
Martins, O. 1987. The Ogun River. Geochemical characteristics of a small drainage basin. Mitt. Geol. Palaout Inst. University Hamburg Scope/UNEP Sonderband, Heft 45 . 475 – 485. Mather, J.R., 1987, Use of the Climatic Water Budget’s selected Environmental Water Problems, Publications in Climatology, v. 33, n. 1, University of Delaware, New – ark, Del.
Mendelsohn, R. and A Dinar, A. 2003. Climate, water and agriculture. Land Economic.
79 (3): 328–341.
Reinsborough, M. A. 2003. Ricardian model of climate change in Canada. Canadian Journal
of Economics. 36: 21–40.
Shaw, M. 1994. Hydrology in practice. Van Nostrand Reinhold, Berkshire, UK, 245pp.
Thornthwaite, C. W. and Mather, J. R. 1957. The water balance publications in Climatology, 8(1), Drexel Institute of Technology, Centerton, N.J.
