Assessment of the Anthropogenic Factors’ Impact upon the Azerbaijan Rivers’ Annual Runoff

Abstract

The article applies a water resources use coefficient and a map of its distribution to assess comprehensively the anthropogenic factors’ impact upon annual runoff of the rivers of Azerbaijan. We used the observation data for 27 rivers. By comparison we have assessed changes of many-year average annual water flows up to 1972 and for the 1973 - 2011/2016 period. We found that anthropogenic decrease of transboundary and national Azerbaijan rivers annual runoff resulted in different degree water stress. At that the number of rivers with high level of water stress (Кисп= 20–40 %) is significantly greater. The annual runoff decrease of many local rivers caused by water withdrawal for irrigation purposes is accompanied with the water content decrease during the summer/fall low water periods up to the rivers’ drying up. We noted that the volume of the permissible water abstraction should be normalized to secure permissible values of ecological river runoff in order to provide rational use of national river water.

Keywords

• azerbaijan
• anthropogenic factors
• irrigation agriculture
• annual runoff
• water resources use coefficient
• water stress