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Assessment of Optimum Environmental Flows Using Economic Evaluation Methods

Mazdarani, Sohrab | 2010

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 40384 (09)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Civil Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Shamsai, Abolfazl
  7. Abstract:
  8. One of the main challenges of Water Resources Planning and Management (WRPM) is to balance water allocation between different uses. Usually, due to political and economic power of other uses, ecosystem receives less attention. Environmental flow is the allocated flow to ecosystem. Ecosystem provides a wide range of services to humanity. Therefore, environmental flow is not exclusively a matter of sustaining ecosystem but also a matter of providing humans with better life. Several methods have been developed to determine the environmental flow but only a few consider its socio-economic aspects. Consideration of these aspects could assist decision-makers with determining the optimum flow and increasing awareness of ecosystem. One of the appropriate ways to increase awareness of ecosystem is economic evaluation of its services. Economic evaluation of ecosystem services enables environmental flow to compete with other interest groups, in the context of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). Forming connection links between environmental flow, ecosystem services, and economic value would be an appropriate method to determine environmental flow. Thus, utilizing economic evaluation, the amount of water allocated to environmental flow could be calculated for a suitable level of ecosystem services. Although this method has a number of defects, with considering a suitable level for ecosystem services and their economic evaluation, the method provides numerous advantages to determining the favorable environmental flow. Haraz River is one of the conserved rivers in north Iran. In this project, allocated environmental flow to this river has been determined with a desktop holistic method. Considering socio-economic aspects, the method finally converts to an ecological method. The environmental flow of Haraz River using the method is equal to 11-14 cubic meter per second.

  9. Keywords:
  10. Environmental Flow ; Economic Evaluation ; Ecosystem Services ; Montana Method

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