Assessment of potential impacts of climate and socio-economic changes on future water security in the Himalayas, India

The shifts in socio-economic development and climate conditions currently become the challenge for water resources system security in the Himalayan region. The aforesaid concern was found pertinent to the main objective of this study, which is to evaluate the combined impacts of climate and socio-economic changes on likely future water security in the Himalayan basin, India. The future climate was projected by Multi-model Ensembles under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 scenario. Land use projection under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) 1 scenario was performed using Markov Chain, whose transition probabilities were derived using multi-layer perceptron neural networks. The results showed that future annual precipitation and temperature at the downstream part will increase from baseline by 5% – 10% and 1.0^oC – 1.55^oC, respectively. The land use projections showed that irrigated areas will decrease for Punjab by 10% – 30% and Haryana by 5% – 10% due to the increase in urbanisation, whereas it will be increased in Rajasthan by 12% – 18%. Consequently, the annual irrigation water demand was found to be decreased by 10% for Punjab and 5% for Haryana, while it will be increased by 13% for Rajasthan. Eventually, the obtained findings will be beneficial for planning strategies to ensure water security in the Himalayan region, in particular the Beas-Sutlej basin.