water Article Assessing Water Withdrawals in Scarce-Data Transboundary Areas by Use of Dynamic Precipitation–Flow Relationships: The Case of the Hasbani River Basin Isabella Shentsis 1, Eliahu Rosenthal 1, Akiva Flexer 1 and Nimrod Inbar 2,3,* 1 Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel;
[email protected] (I.S.);
[email protected] (E.R.);
[email protected] (A.F.) 2 Department of Civil Engineering, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel 3 Geophysics and Space Science, Eastern Regional R&D Centre, Ariel 40700, Israel * Correspondence:
[email protected] Abstract: The present study proposes a nonstandard solution to the problem of assessing water withdrawals (AWW) in the scarce-data transboundary basin. The applied AWW method operates with the open-source available data on precipitation and river flow and thereby overcomes the usual restriction due to lack of data on shared water use in the Middle East. Analysis of dynamic precipitation-flow relationships enable to separate the effect of water withdrawals from the total decline of river flow under the decreasing precipitation. This study is the first which provides complete information (1972–2020) on water withdrawals from total, surface, and base flow of the Hasbani River (Lebanon). The resulting values that exceed by far earlier published estimates were confirmed by (i) indirect indices (area of irrigated land and population), and (ii) validation of the AWW method based on independent data on water use (Israel Water Authority). The study results Citation: Shentsis, I.; Rosenthal, E.; Flexer, A.; Inbar, N. Assessing Water are useful for water balance estimations, as well as for management of water resources in the Jordan Withdrawals in Scarce-Data River headwaters basin and in the entire Lake Kinneret Basin.