Water resources are increasingly vulnerable due to the effects of climate change, which influences both their availability and quality. It is crucial to incorporate climate change adaptation strategies into water resource management to address these challenges and support sustainable practices. This article provides a critical overview of recent advancements in this integration, addressing both theoretical frameworks and practical applications. The discussion highlights the importance of distinguishing between mitigation and adaptation strategies, emphasizing their unique characteristics and interdependencies. Climate change alters water quality through increased temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events, necessitating adaptive strategies to maintain water quality. Immediate coping strategies, such as alternative water sources and filtration systems, address pressing issues but must be complemented by incremental and transformational strategies for long-term resilience. Incremental strategies include upgrading infrastructure and enhancing agricultural practices, while transformational strategies involve comprehensive changes like redesigning urban water systems and revising water governance frameworks. This article identifies socio-economic constraints, awareness gaps, and data deficiencies as significant challenges to effective adaptation. It advocates for integrating climate and water policies, enhancing international co-operation, and investing in innovation and technology. Case studies from India and Vietnam illustrate successful integration of climate adaptation into water management, providing valuable insights for other regions. Overall, a holistic, multi-faceted approach is essential to secure a sustainable water future in the face of climate change.

The evolution of delta and riverbank erosion within the river basin can significantly impact the environment, ecosystems, and lives of those residing along rivers. The Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD), counted among the world’s largest deltas, has undergone significant morphological alterations via natural processes and human activities. This research aims to examine these morphological alterations and their impacts on local economic and social conditions in the VMD. This study utilized satellite data from 1988 to 2020, coupled with population density and land use/land cover (LULC) maps from 2002, 2008, and 2015. The findings reveal that the VMD experienced widespread erosion over the past three decades, covering an area of 66.8 km² and affecting 48% of the riverbank length (682 km). In contrast to riverbanks, islets showed an accretion trend with an additional area of 13.3 km², resulting in a decrease in river width over the years. Riverbank and islet erosion has had a profound impact on the LULC, population, and economy of the provinces along the VMD. From 2002 to 2020, eight different land use types were affected, with agricultural land being the most severely eroded, constituting over 86% of the total lost land area (3235.47 ha). The consequences of land loss due to erosion affected 31,273 people and resulted in substantial economic damages estimated at VND 19,409.90 billion (USD 799.50 million) across nine provinces along the VMD. Notably, even though built-up land represented a relatively small portion of the affected area (6.58%), it accounted for the majority of the economic damage at 70.6% (USD 564.45 million). This study underscores the crucial role of satellite imagery and GIS in monitoring long-term morphological changes and assessing their primary impacts. Such analysis is essential for formulating effective plans and strategies for the sustainable management of river environments.

A key goal of sediment management is the quantification of suspended sediment load (SSL) in rivers. This research focused on a comparison of different means of suspended sediment estimation in rivers. This includes sediment rating curves (SRC) and soft computing techniques, i.e., local linear regression (LLR), artificial neural networks (ANN) and the wavelet-cum-ANN (WANN) method. Then, different techniques were applied to predict daily SSL at the Pirna and Magdeburg Stations of the Elbe River in Germany. By comparing the results of all the best models, it can be concluded that the soft computing techniques (LLR, ANN and WANN) better predicted the SSL than the SRC method. This is due to the fact that the former employed non-linear techniques for the data series reconstruction. The WANN models were the overall best performer. The WANN models in the testing phase showed a mean R² of 0.92 and a PBIAS of −0.59%. Additionally, they were able to capture the suspended sediment peaks with greater accuracy. They were more successful as they captured the dynamic features of the non-linear and time-variant suspended sediment load, while other methods used simple raw data. Thus, WANN models could be an efficient technique to simulate the SSL time series because they extract key features embedded in the SSL signal.

Reservoir sedimentation reduces the gross storage capacity of dams and also negatively impacts turbine functioning, posing a danger to turbine inlets. When the sediment delta approaches the dam, further concerns arise regarding sediments passing through turbine intakes, blades abrasion due to increased silt/sand concentration, choking of outlets, and dam safety. Thus, slowing down the delta advance rate is a worthy goal from a dam manager’s viewpoint. These problems can be solved through a flexible reservoir operation strategy that prioritize sediment deposition further away from the dam face. As a case study, the Mangla Reservoir in Pakistan is selected to elaborate the operational strategy. The methodology rests upon usage of a 1D sediment transport model to quantify the impact of different reservoir operating strategies on sedimentation. Further, in order to assess the long-term effect of a changing climate, a global climate model under representative concentration pathways scenarios 4.5 and 8.5 for the 21st century is used. The reduction of uncertainty in the suspended sediments concentration is achieved by employing an artificial neural networking technique. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis focused on estimating the impact of various parameters on sediment transport modelling was conducted. The results show that a gradual increase in the reservoir minimum operating level slows down the delta movement rate and the bed level close to the dam. However, it may compromise the downstream irrigation demand during periods of high water demand. The findings may help the reservoir managers to improve the reservoir operation rules and ultimately support the objective of a sustainable reservoir use for the societal benefit.

This study evaluated the performance and hydrologic utility of four different satellite precipitation datasets (SPDs), including GPM (IMERG_F), PERSIANN_CDR, CHIRPS, and CMORPH, to predict daily streamflow and SL using the SWAT hydrological model as well as SWAT coupled soft computing models (SCMs) such as artificial neural networks (SWAT-ANNs), random forests (SWAT-RFs), and support vector regression (SWAT-SVR), in the mountainous Upper Jhelum River Basin (UJRB), Pakistan. SCMs were developed using the outputs of un-calibrated SWAT models to improve the predictions. Overall, the GPM shows the highest performance for the entire simulation with R2 and PBIAS varying from 0.71 to 0.96 and −13.1 to 0.01%, respectively. For the best GPM-based models, SWAT-RF showed a superior ability to simulate the entire streamflow with R2 of 0.96, compared with the SWAT-ANN (R2 = 0.90), SWAT-SVR (R2 = 0.87), and SWAT-CUP (R2 = 0.71). Similarly, SWAT-ANN presented the best performance capability to simulate the SL with an R2 of 0.71, compared with the SWAT-RF (R2 = 0.66), SWAT-SVR (R2 = 0.52), and SWAT-CUP (R2 = 0.42). Hence, hydrological coupled SCMs based on SPDs could be an effective technique for simulating hydrological parameters, particularly in complex terrain where gauge network density is low or uneven.