Polytech Nice-Sophia - UNS-UCA

Nice-Sophia, Polytech'Lab
Parc de Sophia Antipolis
930 Route des Colles
06410 Biot
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Thèse soutenue le 18 décembre 2017

Masoud Ghulami
Directeur Thèse Polytech'Lab Philippe Audra

Impact du changement climatique sur la ressource en eau en Afghanistan, estimation, modélisation, remédiation locale


Afghanistan is a semi-arid and mountainous country which faced three decades of conflict. It is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change as it has very limited capacity to address the impacts of climate change. It has been also considered as a data-scarce region both temporally and spatially with limited capability to measure hydro-meteorological parameters with in situ gauges. The current study focuses on Kabul basin which lies in the northeast quarter of Afghanistan. It accounts for thirty-five percent of the population’s water supply, and has the fastest population growth rate in the country. The main objective of this study is to understand the impacts of climate change on water resources and agriculture. To understand the impact on water resource, first of all, the performance evaluation of global datasets/remote sensed products is investigated in order to generate precipitation and temperature datasets for baseline period of climate change studies and developing hydrological model. Then a hydrological model is selected to understand hydrologic response of the Kabul basin and future projections of water availability using future climate projections. To understand the impact on agriculture, a study on farmers’ perception about climate change and its impacts on their agriculture is undertaken. Secondly, a crop model is used to evaluate the impacts of climate change on wheat yield.
his study recommends that the future projections of temperature and precipitation are highly uncertain and policy makers should include a range of projections while making the decisions for development plans and adaptation strategies. Temperature is projected to increase in future for the study area but the results suggest that it might create further opportunities due to increase in the water availability and decrease in the cold temperature stress for the crops. However, lack of infrastructure might lead to further problems due to the possibility of more frequent and extreme floods and droughts. This study can be used as an outline for other river basins in Afghanistan.