Water Accounting in the Litani River Basin

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The Wapor Project has just released an example of water accounting using the remote sensing based water accounting tool (WA+).

This report provides the water accounting study for Litani River basin in Lebanon carried out by IHE Delft using the Water Productivity (WaPOR) data portal of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). The Litani River basin is one of the key river basins in Lebanon and it is experiencing water scarcity with the annual renewable water resources being 606.9 Mm3 /yr. With an estimated population of 375,000 in 2010 and doubled by 2016 due to the Syrian refugee crisis, the total per capita water availability is around 800 m3/cap/year indicating water shortage. Increasing challenges such as growing population, climate change,groundwater over-exploitation and inter-basin transfers have put the available water resources in the basin under stress. The completeness and quality of the hydro-meteorological records are insufficient to draw an appropriate picture of the water resources conditions. However, the Water Accounting Plus (WA+) system designed by IHE Delft with its partners FAO and IWMI has been applied to gain full insights into the state of the water resources in the basin for the period 2010 to 2016. The WA+ framework is a reporting mechanism for water flows, fluxes and stocks that are summarized by means of WA+ sheets. The role of land use and land cover on producing and consuming water is described explicitly.