This is week five, lesson one, session C. Where we're going to talk about how to build a taxonomy of indicators for water analyses. In this session, we're going to learn how to implement a water grammar. That means that we're going to see how to decide what indicators we need for our analyses and how to estimate them. Previously, we have talk about how water is complex, also how in MuSIASEM we need the water analysis to include a natural scale and a human scale, the problemshed and the watershed. And also how the indicators that we're going to need are different for each of the levels of those analytical scales. Now, you will remember these grammar representation from the last session, and how in the part in the bottom part of the table you can see the type of indicators that were advised for each analytical level that connect each of the analytical levels. If we transform those indicators, if we put those indicators in a table and we relate them to different dimensions of water, we can find a number of... So we define a taxonomy of indicators. Now the dimensions to be included in each of the analyses changes with the case studied. In this case, I'm presenting what we did for Mauritius in 2010 and it's a case study that we will see later in the week. Now, for the supply of water from the water cycle or the earth dynamics to the ecosystem functions, it was important to see the precipitation of the external inflow. This differentiation helped us to see how much water was recharged in the aquifers or the rivers it's coming from rain, and how much water is coming from upstream in a river basin for example. Now after the supply of water, what we're going to be interested is to see how much, how effective is that supply in recharging the water bodies. And in this case, the dimensions to be taken into account is the division between surface water, groundwater and soil moisture. Of course if you needed to divide surface water into rivers and lakes for example or ponds, that would be okay too. So as I said, this is really, really flexible. Take into account that we are connecting two levels of analysis so the recharge actually connects the ecosystem functions with water bodies. That means that we're going to have six types of recharge. Six indicators of recharge. So we're going to have the recharge that is coming from precipitation and is going to aquifers. We're going to have the precipitation that is coming, the recharge, sorry that is coming from precipitation and it's going to rivers or lakes. We are also going to have the recharge coming from precipitation that is going to the soil moisture, in the same way with the external inflow. Now, the appropriation and extraction because they happen at the interface, they connect the society level with the water bodies. And in the same way we're going to have six different types of indicators of appropriation or extraction. We're going to look into the surface water that is distributed or non-distributed. And the same for groundwater and for the soil moisture. Now, appropriation typically involves a part of the water bodies that is extracted, and also a part that is polluted. So we understand that all water is appropriated if it has been modified from its natural status. Now, for the society level focuses on extraction, because that's the water that you have to process, for example to clean, to distribute. You might have centralized or non-centralized water utility systems, and that is the water that you are later going to use. If you see direct use connects the whole society with specific societal functions. So again, we're going to have six types in these taxonomy of indicators of direct use. Either my water can be distribute or non-distribute and I can use it to maintain my life, my citizenship or the economy. So life citizenship and economy water are three dimensions that Professor Pedro Adroho defined, in order to better approach the multidimensionality of water use. Life water is the amount of water you need to maintain life and nutrition. So actually like water for us here in Barcelona, in Spain would be the amount of water that we would consider life water, would probably be much higher than the amount of water considered life water for food and nutrition in Ethiopia. Citizenship water is the water we need to clean ourselves, our houses, our streets, for recreation, and these type of social services and social relation types. It is related to social relations. Economy water is the water that the society needs to produce economic value, to produce money. And that will be the water used by the economic sectors. Now, where are these dimensions coming from? I want to just refresh their idea of the water discourse and how different narratives see water differently that we talk about in the first lesson. And I wanted to show you that each of the narratives is probably going to have a different definition of water, but each of the narratives does not necessarily is going to have just one definition of water. So that means that for each of the narratives that we want to check, that we want to analyze, we might include one or more dimensions of water in the analysis. Now, how are we going to do that? Now, we have our list of indicators and how are we going to actually transform them in numbers? Well, first of all, you need to find the data. I don't think that's a surprise to anybody. Once you have your data that can come from either data sources or the scientific literature, you're going to have to take decisions. You are going to have to take decisions because the water data that you're going to find is very very likely not in the way in the taxonomy of MuSIASEM that you just created. So you're going to have to take a decision about how to define indicators and what data to use to associate with each of them. For example, imagine that you find data for water withdrawal in Aquastat. Now, water withdrawal it's going to be the equivalent of extraction. Right. It's not going to be the equivalent of appropriation in principle. Now if your appropriation, if you're looking at a case study where appropriation will be defined as extraction only because you're not looking into quality issues, then withdrawal would be an indicator of appropriation to. Second, you're going to have to decide about the system boundaries. So if you want to analyze water use, is your water use going to be only for those activities that are including within the region you are analyzing? For example, if you produce tomatoes, which one would be your water use? Will it be the water that you use to produce the tomatoes you eat at home? Or is it going to be to produce all the tomatoes including those that you export? Now, finally when you have your data, define your indicators, find your data, decide about how to estimate the indicators and about the system boundaries. You can do what we call benchmarking. Benchmarking is the actual step of crunching the numbers and choosing those numbers that have a meaning for your system. Now, the values of the indicators that will give you the characterization of the systems, those are the benchmarks. You can use two types of indicators for benchmarking. You can use extensive indicators, that will be the right part of the screen, that will be the water use, the total water use. Or you can also use extensive, intensive indicators sorry, which are always relative to something. In MuSIASEM, that something we relate the water flows to are farms. And in this case in the left side of the screen, you can say water related to hectares of land use. Now, these two graphs are showing the water metabolic density. That is the water use there. That is economy water use in agriculture for the production of fruits and vegetables. If you compare, so both graphs are showing the same. One of them is total water on the right, the other one is water per hectare in the left. Now total water will give you a very good idea of the pressure over the ecosystem. However, if you want to benchmark the performance of this social system, you might be better off using intensive indicators. You can see in this graph how Grenada for example which is a province in Andalusia, Spain is exporting in negative a lot of water per hectare, while the total amount of water in Granada might not seem very high in the right side of the graph. Now, this is how we do the feasibility viability check and also the desirability check in MuSIASEM. And as you remember from the scheme of the water metabolism of socio-ecosystem, the feasibility check is going to relate the biophysical exchange with ecosystem integrity. And the viability check is going to relate the water flows with the social societal integrity. So that's why in these two cases, you might want to use intensive variables, instead of extensive which are better off to study the flow accounting, which will be relation A. Now, just to finish this last session, remember that each dimension of water can be considered in the analyses under its own narrative. So different narratives are going to have different dimensions, and each dimension is associated with a certain type of indicator, either supply or recharge or appropriation or water use. Now, the estimations of those indicators might need some modeling if the data is not available. So you might need to use for example water footprinting for water use if you decide that your boundaries go beyond the domestic use of resources. Who is going to decide this? The analyst. We are the people deciding this. So we really need to be very transparent and very clear about the choices we are making. Now, as I said, intensive indicators are much better to characterize metabolic patterns especially in the viability and the feasibility checks.
