Abstract
The so-called drying Victoria Falls received considerable global media attention from October to December 2019. The debate surrounding the falls have split stakeholders, with strong pushback from the tourism sector. This paper taps into the arguments presented in the debate as well as into two earlier academic publications that used 40 years of data focusing on climate change and variability at Victoria Falls published in 2018 and 2019, respectively. The objective of this paper is to undertake a time-series analysis of the Victoria Falls water flow regimes, with specific reference to two half centuries marked by 1919/20–1968/69 (Half Century I) and 1969/70–2018/19 (Half Century II), thereby using 100 years of available data. Drawing from the analysis of the hydrologic data sets for Victoria Falls, the key finding is that Half Century I had evidently higher flows, compared to Half Century II. In addition, daily mean flow regimes for Half Century II were declining, with marked negative trends for January, August, September, October, November and December. From these months, several Mann-Kendall tests confirmed significant declines for October, November and December. The study recommends a basin-wide rethink of how best the deteriorating conditions of the Victoria Falls water flow regimes can be addressed in the context of climate change and anthropogenic factors leading to reduced water flow regimes in Half Century II. Further studies to determine the influence of land use changes in the upper Zambezi River catchment on water flow regimes are recommended.
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Nhamo, G., Dube, K., Chikodzi, D. (2021). Victoria Falls Water Flow Regimes: A Tale of Two Half Centuries. In: Nhamo, G., Chapungu, L. (eds) The Increasing Risk of Floods and Tornadoes in Southern Africa. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74192-1_5
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