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Integrated water resources management on a local scale: a challenge for the user community—a case study in Southern Spain

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Abstract

Associated with the vision of balanced, sustainable resource management, the end of the 20th century witnessed the paradigm of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), whose application was based on considering the river basin as an operating unit. The last decade has seen a preference for a scaled abstraction of this focus in which the administrative and physical limits of the resource that is provided can be considered as water management subunits, albeit ever dependent on and under the supervision of the river basin authority to which it belongs. This article shows the advantages of applying specific IWRM-based measures that can be implemented on a local scale. In the case under study (a municipality in south-eastern Spain) and based on the possibilities it offered, consideration has been given to joint management of the available water resources as feasible from the technical, economic, social and environmental points of view. The project compares two 20-year scenarios to reflect the consequences of incorporating the overexploited aquifer into the local water resources management scheme. Scenario 1 represents the existing non-joint water management, while Scenario 2 considers conjoint water management of surface and groundwater resources, examining variables related to climatic change and economic cycles. The simulations performed demonstrate that local scale management appears to be a feasible solution for semiarid towns and villages: it increases supply compared to current management and guarantees that demand is met for all the irrigation communities and indicates an almost immediate widespread recovery of the water table, even under scenarios with increased demand and a moderate fall in water resources.

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  1. Departamento de Ciencias Politécnicas, Escuela Universitaria Politécnica, UCAM Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia, Campus de los Jerónimos, nº 135, 30107, Murcia, Spain

    Julio Pérez-Sánchez & Javier Senent-Aparicio

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  1. Julio Pérez-Sánchez
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  2. Javier Senent-Aparicio
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Correspondence to Julio Pérez-Sánchez.

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Pérez-Sánchez, J., Senent-Aparicio, J. Integrated water resources management on a local scale: a challenge for the user community—a case study in Southern Spain. Environ Earth Sci 74, 6097–6109 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-015-4633-y

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