Water Poverty Index and its Changes Trend in Fasa Plain

Due to increasing population growth, inadequate management of surface and subsurface water resources, and the escalation of the water crisis in the coming years, will be inevitable. Therefore, it is necessary to provide scientific and multi-criteria indices capable of more precisely examining the status of surface and subsurface water resources. In this study, the water poverty index (WPI) based on five weighted components of resources, availability, capacity, consumption and environment of the Fasa plain during 2008-2018 were calculated and their trends were evaluated using parametric and nonparametric statistical tests (i.e. Mann-Kendall and Spearman). The results showed that the consumption component (0.47) and the capacity component had highest and lowest role in the WPI index. Trend analysis of the WPI index showed that the WPI based on the linear regression, Mann-Kendall and Spearman tests had a non- significant decreasing trend (with S= -0.01, ZS= -1.03 and ZD= -1.38, respectively). It is natural that the decrease in WPI values reflects an increase in the level of crisis in available water resources. Due to the downward trend of WPI index in the Fasa plain, proper scientific and practical management of water resources is essential to provide the enable long-term sustainable use of resources.