Integrated Water Resource Management: A Complex Challenge

Due to population growth and increased pressure on natural systems, large regions of the world are now subjected to water-related problems brought about by numerous human activities. There is, therefore, a need to “upgrade” local-scale knowledge for the estimation and development of water resource management strategies over larger domains. Consequently, water systems need to be analyzed in their entirety for water processes, at various scales in space and time. This paper emphasizes the necessity for overall and integrated water resource management and presents an application to the Zayandeh-rood river basin, in Iran, and examines municipal, industrial, and agricultural demands