Water Accounting

Question 1

What is water accounting?

Answer 1

• A tool to support decision making
• Analyses water resources and their use in a specific geographical domain
• Makes sense of how much water is available and how to use it
• The systematic quantitative assessment
  of the status and trends in water supply, demand, distribution and accessibility

Question 2

What is the purpose of water accounting?

Answer 2

• Identify sources, users, consumptions - supply and demand
• A tool used to support decision making, long term planning

Question 3

Discuss the data needs and data availability for water accounting.

Answer 3

• Need to know: how much water is available, how much is being used and by which sector, where water is being used, how efficient it is being used
• Requires spatial disaggregated data on water availability and utilization
• Often have gaps in data - need to estimate/predict

Question 4

Discuss the importance of land use in relation to water accounting

Answer 4

• Land use is important as in water accounting we want to know where water is being used and by which sector e.g. agriculture
• Water accounting plus computes PET per land use:
  > Protected land use
  > Utilized land use: natural
  > Modified Land use: rainfed cropland
  > Managed water use: irrigated cropland