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also grown. Most agriculture is on small private farms that have been established in relatively recent times, but there are also small areas of traditional date palm gardens and larger government forage production units. Since the 1970s, there has been a drive to increase agricultural production that has led to a rapid depletion of underground aquifers, lowered water tables, and caused extreme increases in soil and water salinity. A considerable amount of investment has been made to ‘green’ the desert. In 1974, there was only one public park in Abu Dhabi with very little greenery, but today the number has increased to about 40, covering an area of more than 300 hectares. The expansion of the green areas in the Emirates is in line with the department’s goal of extending the greenery to cover 8 per cent of Dubai’s total urban area. During 2003, another 30 ha were added to Dubai’s greenbelt. At present, the planted area amounts to about 3.2 % or 2200 ha (Ma, 2005). Amenity plantations use an estimated 245 Mm³/yr of water from a combination of treated effluent, desalinated water and also local groundwater. In Al Ain, traditional oasis plantations that relied previously on aflaj irrigation have since become supported by wells when the aflaj flows ceased in the early 1990’s. The lack of arable land, intense heat, periodic locust invasions, and limited water are major obstacles for the agriculture sector. Lack of precipitation means that agriculture is dependent on irrigation, which is sourced from groundwater (both fresh and desalinated brackish and saline), treated sewage effluent (TSE), and desalinated water. The main problem is that groundwater systems can no longer adequately support existing, large agricultural developments. Alternative water sources are now being investigated and utilized. Much of the farm and forest sector use brackish groundwater while amenity plantings rely on both TSE and wells, especially in Al Ain city where over 400 have recently been inventoried. Treated effluent is also used for irrigation of small scale fodder farms. Amenity watering relies predominantly on TSE. For example, at the Nakheel and Al Ajban farms, desalinated water is now being utilized for irrigation, allowing for a much wider and marketable range of crops. At the former site, desalinated water, imported from the Qidfa, Fujairah plant, is blended with indigenous, brackish water to produce an irrigation water quality of about 1000 mg/l TDS, once again allowing for growing of fruits and vegetables. Users employ traditional water utilization and conservation along with new management methods. Water conservation and new technologies to sustain supply in the semiarid <strong>climate</strong> include desalination plants, construction of dams, restoration of traditional underground water channels (falaj system), well drilling and aquifer testing and exploration. For the last 3,000 years or so aflaj have provided for sutstainable agriculture and civilisation in the Al Ain Region. While historically reliant on the aflaj, water users in the Al Ain region have seen their usability decrease to declining groundwater levels in the source or mother well areas over the last 20-25 years. Despite the difficulties in maintaining the aflaj flows, it is the strategy of Al Ain Municipality who supports the falaj systems, as per decree by the late Sheihk Zayed bin Sultan Al Nayhan, will continue to finance the Falaj and the area of oases that they sustain at all cost. At the same time, the water table in the vicinity of the aflaj shari’a itself has steadily risen in recent years due to artificial recharge of groundwater from treated sewage effluent and desalinated irrigation water which is now widely used to keep the garden city of Al Ain green (Brook et al., 2005). Localized irrigation strategies are dominated by drip, trickle, and bubbler methods but some overhead irrigation is used on lawns and some forage. Most forage is grown with drip irrigation. A small amount of flood irrigation (basin) is still undertaken in traditional date garden areas. For several reasons (rising average salinity of groundwater, difficulties in maintaining yields of irrigation water from boreholes, a dramatically increasing irrigated farm area), drip irrigation has become almost the sole irrigation method, a situation which is probably unique in the world. For a while, subsidies promoted agricultural expansion to the tune of 3,000 new farms (of 2-3 ha) each year, although expansion is currently restricted due to exhaustion of groundwater supplies and has leveled off somewhat. We 86 Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability & Adaptation
Impacts, Vulnerability & Adaptation for Water Resources in Abu Dhabi Figure ‎2‐6. Expansion and plateau of Abu Dhabi Citizens Farms, 1996-2005 expect this trend to continue, if not lead towards a decline of farmed hectares as water becomes scarcer and more expensive (if agriculture increases reliance on desalinated sources). All forestry is irrigated by groundwater; however recently, there is a development to supply limited desalinated water to some projects in the western region. The forestry sector is faced with operational challenges related to poor water quality, lack of sufficient quantity of irrigated water and also poor quality soils. Fortunately, this has led to an emphasis on planting indigenous species allowing the use of brackish and saline waters through drip irrigation in an extreme arid zone environment. The Al Ain Forestry Department estimates water use, which vary according to site, at between 6.1 and 11.1 gallons/tree/day. The Forestry Department also estimate that 58,319,700 gal/day are pumped from 2,663 wells to supply 52,775 ha of forest. It is notable that some natural forests of Ghaff, Samar and Arta survive without irrigation. Where water supply is not constrained, daily irrigation schedule is based upon 8 hr/day groundwater well pumping; this is said to give between 1220 and 2220 gal/ha/ day (equivalent to 0.55 and 0.99 mm/ha/day. On forest sites where water is scarcer, irrigation is restricted to alternate days. In general, trees are under- irrigated because of water shortage (i.e. irrigation is related largely to water supply) and acknowledge that the irrigation is not really monitored in any way. In the Abu Dhabi Municipality, irrigation for amenity watering is not monitored but there has been a rough target of 5-8 gallons/tree/day, while 4 gallons/ day is more likely due to acute shortages of water. For a description of hectares under irrigation in different regions used in our model see Annex 1. 87
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Acknowledgements The authors are de
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Foreword There are many levels at w
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Table of Contents (Part 2) Water Re
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9.2. Types of ecosystem models ....
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APF AML CARA CO 2 CReSIS CSI DEM EG
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Table ‎1‐1. Climate Change and
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2. Sea-level Rise Impacts on Coasta
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differences in observed sea levels
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Sea Level Change (mm) 20 15 10 5 0
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Impacts, Vulnerability & Adaptation
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Gulf is that the shallower depth al
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ago when sea level was a few meters
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Scientists have every reason to bel
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amongst others. Sea level rise may
Page 35 and 36: Figure ‎4‐2. Data displaying ar
Page 37 and 38: Impacts, Vulnerability & Adaptation
Page 39 and 40: processed SRTM topographic dataset
Page 41 and 42: water height of each tidal day obse
Page 43 and 44: Table ‎4‐3. UAE Coastal Cities.
Page 45 and 46: Figure ‎4-10: 1 meters above mean
Page 47 and 48: Figure ‎4-12: 3 meters above mean
Page 49 and 50: as well as parts of the Industrial
Page 51 and 52: up to help to assess technology nee
Page 53 and 54: framework that has relevance to the
Page 55 and 56: to be estimated reliably and hence
Page 57 and 58: 6. Conclusions and recommendations
Page 59 and 60: 7. List of References ADEA (2006)
Page 61 and 62: Assessment Report of the Intergover
Page 63 and 64: 8. Glossary Adaptation: Adjustment
Page 65 and 66: To calculate areas inundated by lan
Page 67 and 68: Annex 1: Elevation Data Sensitivity
Page 69 and 70: Annex 2: Inundation maps 3. Urban V
Page 71 and 72: Figure A2-3 3 meters sea level rise
Page 73: Figure A2-6 1,3,9 meters sea level
Page 77 and 78: Page Figure 4‐6. WEAP estimates o
Page 79 and 80: in storage occurs in the Liwa lens
Page 81 and 82: Figure‎ 2‐1. Percentage of tota
Page 83 and 84: Total installed capacity equals 648
Page 85: Without demand management strategie
Page 89 and 90: Figure 3-1 Global average temperatu
Page 91 and 92: The CO 2 storylines include both
Page 93 and 94: of topography on the region’s pre
Page 95 and 96: Impacts, Vulnerability & Adaptation
Page 97 and 98: Temperature Change (degrees C) Temp
Page 99 and 100: neglected infrastructure, regional
Page 101 and 102: and magnitude of the ENSO (Haines e
Page 103 and 104: Table ‎4‐1. Irrigated Hectares
Page 105 and 106: including estimates of population a
Page 107 and 108: 4.4. Representing Irrigation Demand
Page 109 and 110: Table 4-5. Comparison of Historical
Page 111 and 112: 4.6. Scenarios and Key Assumptions
Page 113 and 114: Avg. Monthly Air Temperature - MOR
Page 115 and 116: Table ‎4‐8. Summary of scenario
Page 117 and 118: 5. Results and Discussion The <stro
Page 119 and 120: total water demand estimate at abou
Page 121 and 122: for the Optimistic and Pessimistic
Page 123 and 124: eport of the IPCC holds out hope th
Page 125 and 126: Table 6-1. Adaptation options for w
Page 127 and 128: CIA, (1990), Middle East Area Oil a
Page 129 and 130: Figure A1‐2. Map of Abu Dhabi key
Page 131 and 132: Data Sources And Assumptions We rel
Page 133 and 134: Table A1-3. continued Liwa- Hammim
Page 135 and 136: Table A2-1. Summary of 36 emission
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139
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List of Tables Page Table 3-1: Majo
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2. Potential risks to dryland ecosy
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4. Major terrestrial ecosystems in
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Peninsula in the north to close to
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5. Important flora in Abu Dhabi Abu
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over a one third of the known speci
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6. Fauna of the terrestrial ecosyst
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include the urban development and i
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(Arnell, 1999; Milly et al., 2005).
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camels and other large herbivores i
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8. Biodiversity, ecosystem threshol
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Alternatively, established shrublan
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e functionally deficient. We projec
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Adaptation can be planned or it can
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is based on a theoretical understan
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species to adapt to a changing <str
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that remediation steps begin soon t
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10 References Adler, PB, DA Raff, W
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Nordad, (2007), Climate Change Fact
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Annex 2: Expected effects of global
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Annex 4: Main drivers of ecosystem
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Sn Species Scientific name Family S
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Sn Species Scientific name Family S
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Name of species/sub-species Habitat
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Annex 8: Native species list of ter
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The cover picture represents a Brid
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