Evaluation of Water Balance in a Mountainous Upland Catchment Using SEBAL Approach

Scarcity of water is now the biggest threat in many parts of the world, specially in arid and semi arid regions. Establishing balance between water resources and the demands in a catchment scale basis could be one of the most important strategies to overcome this problem. In this regard, determination and analysis of water balance components (inputs and outputs) would be necessary. This study has focused on estimation of water balance components in arid-mountainous catchment of Manshad in Yazd province of Iran, during the year 2006–2007 using remote sensing and GIS techniques. To estimate actual evapotranspiration (ETa) of the catchment, time series of MODIS images were obtained and used via Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) approach. Measured precipitation (P) and runoff (R) data of the catchment were also used to calculate water balance equation components. Results indicated that a large volume of catchment water (about 70%) is wasted through evapotranspiration, while the rainfall is not enough to compensate this volume of water during the year. It seems that the negative (descending) trend has become dominant to the water budget of the area and gradually moves to harsh conditions of water shortage in future decades. Therefore, some actions would be necessary to overcome the problem. Water conservation strategies‚ improvement of water use efficiency, and control on agricultural field expansions are some solutions that could be advised for the studied catchment.