Evaluation of impact of climate variability on water resources and yield capacity of selected reservoirs in the north central Nigeria

This paper presents the evaluation of the impact of climate change on water resources and yield capacity of Asa and Kampe reservoirs. Trend analysis of mean temperature, runoff, rainfall and evapotranspiration was carried out using Mann Kendall and Sen's slope, while runoff was modeled as a function of temperature, rainfall and evapotranspiration using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Rainfall and runoff exhibited positive trends at the two dam sites and their upstream while forecasted ten-year runoff displayed increasing positive trend which indicates high reservoir inflow. The reservoir yield capacity estimated with the ANN forecasted runoff was higher by about 38% and 17% compared to that obtained with historical runoff at Asa and Kampe respectively. This is an indication that there is tendency for water resources of the reservoir to increase and thus more water will be available for water supply and irrigation to ensure food security.