Proceedings of the 19th IAHR-APD Congress 2014, Hanoi, Vietnam

ISBN 978604821338-1

ASSESSMENT OF WATER QUALITY INFLUENCE BY A FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE

IN A RESERVOIR LOCATED IN THE BOLIVIAN ANDES

MAKOTO UMEDA(1) & KEISUKE TANI(2)

(1)
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan,
umeda@civil.tohoku.ac.jp
(2)
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan,
tani@kasen.civil.tohoku.ac.jp

ABSTRACT
Glacial melt water is major water resources in and around La Paz, the capital of Bolivia in the center of South America.
However, previous studies have predicted that the glaciers in this area will disappear in 30 or 40 years because of
climate change. In this study, water temperature around the end of the century in Tuni Reservoir, which is located at
downstream of glaciers and provides domestic water to the cities nearby, were predicted with 1-dimensional hydraulic -
water quality model using the outputs of a global climate model. The results indicate that surface temperature in the
reservoir will basically depend on temperature rise. However, inflow rates will decrease about 60% by glacier
disappearance and change more variably each year. Therefore, it is important to consider the management of the
reservoir on both quantity and quality of the water in the future.

Keywords: Bolivian Andes, tropical glacier, climate change, reservoir, water quality

1. INTRODUCTION the maximum depth of about 30m, and a highest water

Climate change is one of the problems that draw the most
serious concerns worldwide recently, especially in the
area of aquatic science and engineering. One of the
reasons is that climate change is expected to have a
number of impacts on aquatic environment and water
resources. In several regions of South America, major
part of water resources is provided by melted water from
glaciers. However, due to the recent warming climate,
many of those glaciers are retreating, and future plan of
water supply requires substantial discussions on
substitute to the current resources or on further
development of water resources like dams or
groundwater wells.
This study focused on aquatic environment of a water-
supplying reservoir that was constructed in a river basin
originates from tropical glaciers in Latin America. First,
field measurements were conducted regarding water
temperature and hydrological conditions that affects
formation of river and reservoir water quality. Then, in
order to project and assess future states of water quality
in the future influenced by climate change, a set of
computational models was developed for the reservoir
and its basin to discuss quantitative and qualitative
change of reservoir water regime in the future.
2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
2.1 Study field
Tuni Lake is an artificial reservoir located about 30 km
northwestward from La Paz, the administrative capital of
Bolivia. The mail purpose of the reservoir is to supply
domestic water to the two nearby large cities, La Paz and
El Alto. The reservoir has a total capacity of 24.7 10 6 m3,
level at full storage of 4,435m. Fig. 1 shows the watershed
of Tuni Lake, which consists of three major basins of
inflowing rivers. Each river has glaciers at its upstream
end, although the all of the glaciers are losing their mass
year by year because of the warming climate.
The reservoir water is drawn with a discharge of 1 m3
almost all through the year and carried to water
purification plants. Tuni River, which locates between the
other two rivers, is the only river that runs into the
reservoir directly. The flow of the other rivers, Condoriri
River and Huayna Potosi River, has seasonal diversions
into the Tuni Lake during rainy season from December
through March. Hence, the reservoir is operated in such a
way that it comes to its full storage during rainy season
to prepare for the supply of water during dry season.
2.2 Field data
Continuous measurements of water temperature and
water level in Tuni Lake were conducted in this study.
Vertical distribution of water temperature was measured
by deploying auto-recording water temperature meter
(TidBit v2, Onset Computer co. Ltd.) with a depth
interval of 1m from around the water surface to the
bottom, and the water level was measured with a
pressure gauging water level logger (HOBO U20, Onset
Computer co. Ltd.) deployed close to the lowest storage
water level of the reservoir. Location of the deployment
was around the deepest point in the lake as shown in Fig.
2. The period of those measurements was from
September 21, 2010 to August 27, 2011.
Meteorological and hydrological monitoring has been
also conducted in and around the reservoir and the
related river basins since June 2011. Water temperature of

1
inflow water was continuously measured at the entrance
point of Tuni River to the reservoir. Weather condition of
atmospheric temperature, solar radiation, wind velocity
and humidity around the reservoir was measured at the
south side of the lake with data acquisition system (U30-
NRC data logger, OnSet Computer co. Ltd.). Besides
those data obtained in our research project, data
measured by SENAMHI Bolivia (Servicio Nacional de
Meteorologie e Hidrologia) was also referred in this
study. The closest measuring station by SENAMHI was
the one at El Alto international airport, whose data was
applied if data is lacking in the measurements of this
study. As for atmospheric temperature, modification was
done considering a temperature lowering rate of 0.6 degC
/ 100 m.
Figure 1. Tuni Lake and its catchment with locations of
measurement stations.
Artificial
Tuni
River
channel
Artificial
channel
constituting the Tuni Lake catchment was predicted with
0 0 .5 1km
Water
temperature
station
Meteorological
Figure 2. Measurement location in and around Tuni Lake.
2.3 Water temperature modeling in the lake
Structure of water temperature in the lake was analyzed
using a vertical 1-dimensional computation model. The
model is consisted of the following analysis procedures
of water mass balance affected by inflow and outflow,
heat balance through the water surface mostly influenced
by meteorological conditions, and vertical diffusion and
mixing of the heat inside the water body, and it computes
temporal changes of thermal stratification in lakes and
reservoirs. This computational model has already been
applied to a number of studies on water temperature
simulation in reservoirs and water quality and
temperature analysis in a lake. Therefore, verification of
the model has already been well examined in those
existing achievements.
The heat balance components considered in the model
are short wave radiation, long wave radiation from the
water body itself and the atmosphere above it, latent and
sensible heat:
(1)
, where r = reflection rate at the water surface, b =
absorption rate at the surface of water. Empirical
formulations were used to estimate long wave radiation,
and latent and sensible heat by the use of Swinbanks
formula and Rohwers formula, respectively. Heat
conveyance below the water surface with regard to the
depth direction is calculated based on the law of Lambert
- Beer:
(2)
, where IZ = intensity of short wave at the depth of y, =
attenuation coefficient.
2.4 Computation conditions
GCM outputs from MRI-GCM20 obtained by Mizuta et
al. (2006) or Kitoh et al. (2009) were used as future
meteorological conditions. The periods of computation
applied in this study were present (1994 - 2003) and
future (2090 - 2099), in which SRES-A1B was used as the
emission scenario. To these GCM results, a simple bias
correction was applied as following. The mean
temperature of present 10 years in the computational cell
containing the study area were compared between GCM
output and measurement, and the difference was added
to the GCM results to make corrected atmospheric
temperature. The correction was 1.4 C.
Discharge into the reservoir was estimated using the
results of hydrological model by Kinouchi et al. (2012)
who developed a distributed runoff model in the same
study area to consider the characteristics of snow and ice
melting processes. Each discharge in the three rivers
the runoff model, and the total discharge into the
reservoir was estimated. Fig. 1 shows the output
locations of the runoff model. In this runoff calculation
for the future condition, glaciers in the watershed were
assumed completely disappeared. This assumption was
based on a recent research results by Ramirez et al.
(2011), who predicted that most of the glaciers in the
study area would disappear by 2040.
Conduction of water from the two rivers is set to be done
during the rainy season from December 1st to March 31st
according to the current operation, which is assumed
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same in the future. The discharge of the present intake
condition is given 1 m3 to be constant following the
current operation. However, in the future conditions,
inflow discharge is predicted to decrease, and the storage
of reservoir easily reaches empty level. Therefore, the
water intake condition is adjusted considering the
reduction rate of river discharge. Mean ratio of discharge
between the present 10 years and the future 10 years is
multiplied to the current intake of 1 m3.
Distance from the upper reach glacier to the reservoir is
about 5 km. Influence on water temperature of inflow to
the reservoir from glacier is negligible small when the
water enters the reservoir, since it has almost reached an
equilibrium temperature determined by the heat balance
conditions of the environment. Therefore, correlation
between atmospheric temperature and river water
temperature was analyzed and the following empirical
relation is made to estimate the inflow water
temperature:
reservoir is 2.9010 7 m3 at present and 1.05 10 7 m3 in the
future. Therefore, the future inflow of the reservoir is
about 37 % to the present state, and severe scarcity of
water is expected in the future. From that estimation, a
constant discharge of 0.37 m3 was given as the condition
of water intake from the reservoir. Under current state,
the reservoir has its full storage during wet season to
prepare for water intake during dry season. However,
under the future conditions, even when the intake
discharge is reduced to 40 % of that of the present, the
maximum storage of the reservoir was below its full
capacity. Yearly variation of river discharge is predicted
to become larger. Therefore, it will be more important to
invent management policies to secure water resources in
the future.

(3)
, where Tw is water temperature, and Ta is atmospheric
temperature. The correlation coefficient is 0.78.

Figure 3.Water level and inflow discharge of Tuni lake, and

discharge of Huayna Potosi River of future and present
conditions.

3. RESULTS
3.1 Hydrological state of the reservoir
Figure 3 shows river discharge at the diversion weir of
Huayna Potosi basin and the time series of discharge and
water level of the reservoir considering water conduction.
As Kinouchi et al. (2013) indicated, beginning of
discharge increase in wet season would delay about one
month. This is because remarkable flooding condition
produced by melting of glacier will disappear in the
future. Annual mean precipitation is estimated to
decrease 20 % from 589 mm at present to 477 mm in the
future, while annual mean inflow discharge into the
Figure 4. Part of the results and input conditions of the numerical
simulation of the future and the present states.
3.2 Impact evaluation of the climate change on water
temperature
Figure 4 shows results of water temperature variation of
the present (July 1994 - June 1995) and the future (July
2094 - June 2095) extracted from all the respective ten
years computation as representative examples, whose
maximum water temperatures are the closest in each ten
years. Surface water temperature during the period of

3
2094 - 2095 is about 2 to 3 C higher than that in 1994 - 2099 16.00 6.23 4.98
1995 all through the year. This result corresponds to the Average 15.69 5.15 4.79
increase of about 4 C in the atmospheric temperature.
Std. Dev. 0.87 0.58 0.94
Weak thermal stratification develops during wet summer
season from around November though April under the
present conditions. On the other hand, almost no
stratification is observed in the future conditions. Those 4. CONCLUSIONS
results are supposed to be resulted from such phenomena
that decrease of relative difference of water temperature Reservoir management in terms of both quantity and
of the inflow and the reservoir and that change in diurnal quality of water was discussed in a reservoir located in
variation of atmospheric temperature to promote surface Andes Altiplano. The reservoir, Tuni Lake, is one of the
cooling mixture during night. Table 1 is a summary of major water resources of the metropolice area of Bolivia,
the results of simulation in the respective period of the 10 La Paz and El Alto, whose population is over two
years. Three indices of maximum and minimum surface million. The water flowing into the reservoir sources
water temperature, and maximum difference water from glaciers existing upper reaches of the basin.
temperature between surface and bottom. The results However, because of the influence from climate change,
indicate that increase of minimum water temperature is retreat of those glaciers is now so vigorous that it threats
slightly larger than that of maximum temperature, and future water supplies in those areas. In this study, river
that yearly variation in the future is larger than that in the runoff in the basin and water temperature in the reservoir
present conditions. On the other hand, stratification was analyzed by the use of computational model based
intensity, which is expressed by the third index, in the on field measurement data. The major conclusions
future is estimated to become smaller. However, obtained are as follow:
standard deviation is larger in the future similar to the 1) After complete disappearance of glacier in the basins
results of maximum and minimum water temperature. of entering rivers to the Tuni Lake in the future, annual
Larger variations of river flow caused by disappearance total discharge into the reservoir will be reduced as low
of the glaciers also seem to influence on water as 37 % of the current state.
temperature variations in the reservoir.
2) Heat balance in the lake appears to have different
tendency compared with that in reservoirs in Japan. For
example, surface water temperature is about 2 to 9 deg C
Table 1. Statistical summary of the results of surface water higher than the air temperature right above the water
temperature simulation of the present and the future. body.
a) present1994 2003
Maximum Minimum Stratificatio 3) According to our computational prediction of water
Year water temp. water temp. n temperature and stratification regimes, intensity of
stratification was estimated to be weakened in the future.
1994 11.98 2.12 4.81 Besides, due to larger variation of runoff conditions in the
1995 12.40 0.91 5.61 basin and the reservoir, variation of water temperature in
1996 12.19 0.67 6.28 the reservoir is projected also to be enlarged.
1997 13.73 1.49 5.83 Therefore, further advance of the glacier retreat and
1998 13.21 1.85 6.05 decline of the runoff in the basin will require reviewing
the operation of water conduction and management of
1999 11.98 0.90 4.84
the reservoir. In order to prepare for those situations,
2000 12.83 0.86 5.29
continuous monitoring of aquatic environment in the
2001 11.99 1.88 5.12 basin and the reservoir is necessary.
2002 12.37 1.49 5.08
2003 12.01 1.51 5.35 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Average 12.47 1.37 5.43 This study was supported by JST/JICA, SATREPS
Std. Dev. 0.57 0.48 0.48 (Science and Technology Research Partnership for
Sustainable Development) and JSPS KAKENHI (No.
24404015).
b) Future (2090 2099)
Maximum Minimum Stratificatio REFERENCES
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