Quantitative analysis of the human intervention impacts on hydrological drought in the Zayande-Rud River Basin, Iran

Abstract In a human-dominated world, access to sustainable water resources has led to complex management policies that affect hydrological droughts. Applying the best approach to assess the contribution of these human-made changes to hydrological droughts is still underexplored. In this study, the individual and joint impacts of dam and inter-basin water transfer projects are quantified for the characteristic changes of hydrological drought using a developed data-based framework and were tested in a semi-arid, data-scarce basin in central Iran. The proposed data-based framework combines the upstream–downstream comparison method and the individual–station–drought analysis. This framework could properly assess the individual and joint contributions of dam and water transfer projections to making aggravations or alleviations in hydrological drought. It identified the dam and joint impacts of the dam with water transfer by 66 and 55%, respectively, as the most effective human intervention to alleviate the duration of hydrological drought. The proposed framework gives the flexibility to form different comparative analyses by using different types of flow data to assess the impacts of human interventions. This framework is also applicable in other regions to quantify the contributions of point-based human interventions to hydrological droughts. The comprehensive knowledge of solutions to alleviate the adverse impacts of droughts can reduce the damage in water-stressed regions.