A case in point: many subsistence farmers in Orongo village in the Kisumu district of Kenya – a lowland floodplain area that relies on water from Lake Victoria, which is mainly rain-fed – will appear to use more or less water depending on whether a small or large land area is considered in the analysis. One potential consequence of such projections is how engineers design water-retention ponds for irrigation purposes.
Kenya currently uses only 9% of its available water resources because of poor water management. Roughly 50% of the total population now lives below the national poverty line as a result. This poverty estimate is even greater in Kisumu, at around 53%, because the region also suffers from unreliable rainfall throughout the year.
Analysing local or regional areas also leads to different interpretations of how the water cycle changes, says team member Steve Lyon. But despite this, it is clear that changes in local and regional water and land use lead to significant variations in the local and regional coupled hydro-climatic system.