ASSESSMENT OF ATBARA BASIN UNDER THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT PLANS

Abstract

The Nile River has three main basins, which are: the basin of the Equatorial Lakes Plateau,the basin of Bahr­el­Ghazal, and the Ethiopian Plateau.The Atbara River is one of the three rivers that form the Ethiopian Plateau. It originates inEthiopia highlands approximately 50 km north of Lake Tana, and it flows about 805 km untilit joins the main Nile River north of Khartoum between the fifth and sixth cataracts formingan area of about 198,000 km2. It provides about 14 percent of the annual discharge in Egypt. The needs of water resource management and flood control strategy witnessed thedevelopment of the basin. Significant advances have been made in the monitoring, analysisand prediction of the behavior of Atbara River system resulting in a better understanding oftheir mechanism and the possibility of optimizing its resources as well as being able to controlor mitigate the effects of major water infrastructures.Under the supervision of Stockholm Environment Institute, The Water Evaluation andPlanning System (WEAP) was developed in order to develop integrated, and transparentplanning tool for evaluating the sustainability of current water demand and supply patternsand exploring alternative long range scenarios.Within the context of transboundary integrated water resource planning and management, theevaluation of Atbara Basin would be taken. The objective of this pilot case application for theAtbara sub­basin is to undertake scenarios using the WEAP Model for representing thepresent state of water resource development for the pilot application case.The main output of the study is to identify the possible effects of TK5 dam project, as a pilotcase, on Atbara flow yield.