TY  - JOUR
A1  - Woltersdorf, Laura
A1  - Liehr, Stefan
A1  - Döll, Petra
T1  - Rainwater harvesting for small-holder horticulture in Namibia : design of garden variants and assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation
T2  - Water
N2  - The design of rainwater harvesting based gardens requires considering current climate but also climate change during the lifespan of the facility. The goal of this study is to present an approach for designing garden variants that can be safely supplied with harvested rainwater, taking into account climate change and adaptation measures. In addition, the study presents a methodology to quantify the effects of climate change on rainwater harvesting based gardening. Results of the study may not be accurate due to the assumptions made for climate projections and may need to be further refined. We used a tank flow model and an irrigation water model. Then we established three simple climate scenarios and analyzed the impact of climate change on harvested rain and horticulture production for a semi-arid region in northern Namibia. In the two climate scenarios with decreased precipitation and medium/high temperature increase; adaptation measures are required to avoid substantial decreases in horticulture production. The study found that the most promising adaptation measures to sustain yields and revenues are a more water efficient garden variant and an enlargement of the roof size. The proposed measures can partly or completely compensate the negative impacts of climate change.
KW  - rainwater harvesting
KW  - gardening
KW  - climate change
KW  - adaptation
KW  - scenario
KW  - semi-arid
KW  - Namibia
Y1  - 2015
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/37418
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-374187
SN  - 2073-4441
N1  - This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 7
IS  - 4
SP  - 1402
EP  - 1421
PB  - Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI)
CY  - Basel
ER  -