River flow for nature vs irrigation the Zarafshan at Ravatkhoja

Before you play: what this model shows, and why

What you see. The Zarafshan at the Ravatkhoja headworks, where the Samarkand canals Dargom, Mirzapay and Akkaradarya take their water, day by day for the five years 2019–2023, with the recorded river and the canals' real monthly demand. The model has five TaqSim blocks: the inflow, the headworks with TaqSim's environmental-flow rule, the canal gate, the fields and the river end. Nothing is stored and nothing is lost between them: on every day, what arrives either goes to the fields or stays in the river. The same kinds of block build the full basin model. The tab How it works, below the charts, gives the arithmetic of one day and how the river score is made.

What you can change. Two levers, both numbers in the rule of the headworks. The reserve share: the part of each day's flow that is kept for the river before the canal takes anything. The reserve ceiling: the most the rule ever reserves on one day. With the share at 100 % the ceiling becomes a guaranteed minimum: the first so-many cubic metres per second of every day stay in the river, whatever the canal needs. So the question is not only how much water to leave in the river, but how: as a share of each day, or as a floor that is never crossed.

What you watch. Two results. Crops supplied: the water the fields received over the five years, as a share of what the canals asked for. River score: how far the river below the headworks is from its natural regime, on the 33 indicators of hydrologic alteration (the mean flow of each month, computed from the daily series; extremes and their timing; pulses; rates of change), summarised by the IARI index as implemented in the fishy package. 0 is natural; up to 0.05 counts as close to natural, up to 0.15 as good, above that as altered. Lower is better. Under the tiles, Beaten by says whether another plan is at least as good on both results and better on one.

Why this river is interesting. The canal takes only 16 % of the five years' water (13 % in wet 2019, 21 % in dry 2021), yet with no reserve the river scores 0.30, "altered". The reason is when it takes it. The canal starts in March, while the river is still at its winter low, and in September it still asks for 43 m³/s when the summer flood has receded. Under the starting plan the river below the headworks drops to 17 m³/s (late September 2023) where in the record it never fell below 26, and it is below that on 15 days, in April 2021 and September 2023. Leaving a share does little until the share is large: up to 50 % the crops still get 99.7 % of their water, and the river is still "altered". A guaranteed minimum protects exactly the low days: keeping the first 100 m³/s in the river makes the score "good", at the cost of about a quarter of the crops' water. Two plans that give the crops nearly the same water, "leave 80 %" and "the first 80 m³/s always stay", give the river different scores, 0.167 and 0.151; the second is better on both counts.

What to try. Follow the five tasks on the right. Find the share at which the crops first go short. Find the smallest minimum that makes the river "good", and what it costs. Load Example A and Example B, then open the tab The 33 indicators for each and see which indicators differ. In the Trade-off explorer, every one of the 91 lever settings is a dot; the filled dots are the 43 plans that no other plan beats. Click one and see what kind of rule it is. Finally, back at the starting plan, see which indicators are hurt most although the canal takes so little.

What a water manager takes away. How water is left in a river matters as much as how much: a floor on the low days does more for the river per cubic metre than a share of every day. An index like the IARI makes "the river's health" comparable between plans, but it sees hydrology only, nothing about fish, temperature or sediment, and here it works against a reference of 14 years where the method asks for 20; it is a tool for comparing plans, not a verdict. Among the plans that no other plan beats, choosing is a decision about how much river to trade for how much crop, which the model informs but cannot make.

The river as blocks

Scroll sideways to see the whole river →

Water flows from left to right. Numbers on the lines are Mm³ (million m³) that flowed in the year shown; the line width follows the flow. The Headworks block carries TaqSim's e-flow rule: each day it reserves min(share × flow, ceiling) for the river and passes the rest to the canal gate. The Canal gate gives the fields what they need that day and returns the rest to the river. Nothing is stored and nothing is lost between the blocks. Click a block to see its rule and its water balance.

Why surplus and shortages can coexist: the diagram adds up the year, but water is allocated each day. Daily surplus returned to the river is water left after that day's canal demand is met. Shortages happen on other days when too little water remains after the river reserve. There is no reservoir here to save surplus water for those days.

The river below the headworks, day by day

Crops against the river

Hover a dot for its levers and numbers. Click a dot to load that plan into the levers.