Mapping Water Vulnerability of the Yangtze River Basin: 1994–2013

A holistic understanding of the magnitude and long-term trend of water vulnerability is essential for making management decisions in a given river basin. Existing procedures to assess the spatiotemporal dynamic of water vulnerability in complex mega-scale river basins are inadequate; a new method named ensemble hydrologic assessment was proposed in this study, which allows collection of data and knowledge about many aspects of water resources to be synthesized in a useful way for vulnerability assessment. The objective of this study is to illustrate the practical utility of such an integrated approach in examining water vulnerability in the Yangtze River Basin. Overall, the results demonstrated that the ensemble hydrologic assessment model could largely explain the spatiotemporal evolution of water vulnerability. This paper improves understanding of the status and trends of water resources in the Yangtze River Basin.