Simulation of Future Land Use for Water Management

Water management in the Netherlands is normally concerned with the prevention of flooding, but the opposite problem, water shortage, is increasingly getting attention. The idea of water shortage is not immediately combined with the wet appearance of the Netherlands. But there are indications for possible shortages of water at certain periods when the overall demand for water is high. Even in the wet Netherlands ground and surface water may become too scarce to allow for sustainable use for various functions as: transportation, irrigation, recreation and drinking water production. In order to assess the magnitude of this problem a water shortage study has been started in the Netherlands, in which the impact of land use change is an important issue. Land use has a strong influence on the water balance of a given area. The relationship lies particularly in the fact that different kinds of land use allow for different levels of (rain) water to infiltrate into the ground. Especially the increasing urbanisation and changes in the agricultural areas greatly influence problems of water shortage. An increase in built-up area causes higher peaks in the drainage systems and less infiltration. Crop choice in combination with the soil type strongly influences evaporation and infiltration ratios. Also, the level of groundwater is determined often by land use. Land use models ca