Water 2014, 6, 3270-3299; doi:10.3390/w6113270 OPEN ACCESS water ISSN 2073-4441 www.mdpi.com/journal/water Article Simulating Water Resource Availability under Data Scarcity—A Case Study for the Ferghana Valley (Central Asia) Iuliia Radchenko 1,*, Lutz Breuer 1, Irina Forkutsa 2 and Hans-Georg Frede 1 1 Landscape, Water and Biogeochemical Cycles, Research Center for BioSystems, Land Use and Nutrition, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 26-32, Giessen 35392, Germany; E-Mails:
[email protected] (L.B.);
[email protected] (H.-G.F.) 2 Center for International Development and Environmental Research (ZEU), Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Senckenbergstr. 3, Giessen 35390, Germany; E-Mail:
[email protected] * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail:
[email protected]; Tel.: +49-641-99-37382; Fax: +49-641-99-37389. External Editor: Richard Skeffington Received: 17 June 2014; in revised form: 29 September 2014 / Accepted: 14 October 2014 / Published: 30 October 2014 Abstract: Glaciers and snowmelt supply the Naryn and Karadarya rivers, and about 70% of the water available for the irrigated agriculture in the Ferghana Valley. Nineteen smaller catchments contribute the remaining water mainly from annual precipitation. The latter will gain importance if glaciers retreat as predicted. Hydrological models can visualize such climate change impacts on water resources. However, poor data availability often hampers simulating the contributions of smaller catchments. We tested several data pre-processing methods (gap filling, MODAWEC (MOnthly to DAily WEather Converter), lapse rate) and their effect on the performance of the HBV (Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenavdelning)-light model.