Regional characteristics of Japanese major river basins in terms of the change of water supply-demand potential

Abstract

This study is intended to analyze water supply-demand potential in Japanese major 109 river basins and to discuss the regional characteristics in terms of the temporal change of the potential. Mesh dataset is prepared for the analysis of this study, which consists of watershed boundary data, population, the number of manufacturing establishments, land use and precipitation. With the dataset, this study tries to estimate total water demand and the amount of available water resources by the major river basin. In conclusion, geographical backgrounds specifying water supply-demand potential in a river basin have some regional patterns. River basins with relatively high water supply-demand ratio are widely distributed around the country, and the specifying factors are regionally diverse.