Reservoir Operation Considering Environmental Flows

Growing pressure on use of available water for human demand in Hari Rod River basin requires a better understanding of flow in river system, as well as for allocating the available resources in effective way considering the water need for the riverine ecosystem. This study attempts to quantify the required environmental flows for healthy ecosystem and demonstrates the application of hydraulic and hydrological based methods for major Afghanistan river basins.Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA) method considering Range of Variability Analysis (RVA) were used to estimate the need of environmental flows and were compared with other hydrological based approaches.Maintaining environmental flows of a river means reducing the water demand of one or more sectors. Keeping this in perspective, reservoir simulation technique was applied to operate the proposed reservoir (Salma Dam).Alternative mitigation measures were suggested to reduce the impacts of allocating EF on irrigation and hydroelectric demands. Dry years conservation zone were developed to decrease the irrigation shortages caused by environmental flows consideration.