Climate change reduces water availability for agriculture by decreasing non-evaporative irrigation losses

Malek, Keyvan; Adam, J. C.; Stöckle, Claudio O.; Peters, R. Troy

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.11.046

Cited by 63 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 102 publications

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“…(Malek et al, 2017) evaluated VIC-CropSyst's performance regionally over the Pacific Northwest and locally over three flux-tower sites in Nebraska and Illinois and found the model capable of simulating crop yield, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, leaf area index, and irrigation demand. Malek et al (2018) also compared VIC-CropSyst's simulated irrigation demand with the USBR's (2010) demand estimations over the YRB. The relative error for the basin-wide irrigation demand was around 5%.…”

Section: Water Resources Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When Should Irrigators Invest in More Water‐Efficient Technologies as an Adaptation to Climate Change?

Malek

Adam

Stöckle

et al. 2018

Water Resources Research

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The western U.S. is expected to experience more frequent and severe droughts as a result of climate change, with potentially large impacts on agricultural production and the economy. Irrigated farmers have multiple options for minimizing the impact of drought including switching to more efficient irrigation technologies. More efficient technologies that increase the fraction of the water available to the crop root zone would allow farmers to maintain current production levels with less water. However, these systems are capital intensive. The objective of this study is to explore when (and under what climatic conditions) it makes economic sense for farmers to invest in new irrigation systems. We examine this in the Yakima River Basin in Washington State of the U.S. We use VIC‐CropSyst, a large‐scale grid‐based modeling framework that mechanistically simulates hydrologic and agricultural processes. Water supply simulated by VIC‐CropSyst drives a river system and water management model (YAK‐RW). A computational platform was developed to perform the economic analysis for each grid cell, crop type, and future climate scenario separately, which allowed us to explore whether the implementation of more efficient irrigation systems would be economically viable. Our results indicate that investing in a more efficient irrigation system improves agricultural economy of the Yakima River Basin (9% −25%). We also show that at the farm level, more significant droughts can provide economic incentives for investment up to a point. For severe climate change projections, droughts become frequent and severe enough that economic benefits of improving water use efficiency do not exceed investment costs.

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Section: Water Resources Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Table B4 shows the characteristics of the irrigation systems considered in this study. The irrigation depths and efficiencies were calculated as the basin-wide average by Malek et al (2018). The number of irrigations was Note.…”

Section: B3 Operational Costsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Should Irrigators Invest in More Water‐Efficient Technologies as an Adaptation to Climate Change?

Malek

Adam

Stöckle

et al. 2018

Water Resources Research

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“…The YRB has been historically sensitive to droughts and is projected to experience more frequent and severe droughts in the future (Elsner et al, 2010;Vano et al, 2010;Malek et al, 2018). Malek et al (Forthcoming) explore how future droughts provide financial incentives for farmers to switch to more-efficient irrigation systems.…”

Section: Integrated Modeling For Improved Management Of the Yrb Few Nmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incorporating Social System Dynamics in the Columbia River Basin: Food-Energy-Water Resilience and Sustainability Modeling in the Yakima River Basin

Givens

Padowski

Guzmán

et al. 2018

Front. Environ. Sci.

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“…Water withdrawal for irrigation has been widely adopted to increase crop production in arid and semi-arid regions. Water redistribution through irrigation enhances water and energy fluxes between soils and the atmosphere (Rost et al, 2008;Sacks et al, 2009), and results in elevated water loss through evapotranspiration (Hao et al, 2015;Malek et al, 2017;Polo and Losada, 2016), and depletion of water resources (Aeschbach-Hertig and Gleeson, 2012) in different regions of the world. To better simulate impacts of irrigation, numerical models have been developed to quantify water fluxes among soils, vegetation, and water bodies induced by irrigation (Leng et al, 2013;Santhi et al, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implications of water management representations for watershed hydrologic modeling in the Yakima River Basin

Qiu¹,

Yang²,

Huang³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. Water management substantially alters natural regimes of streamflow through modifying retention time and water exchanges among different components of the terrestrial water cycle. Accurate simulation of water cycling in intensively managed watersheds, such as the Yakima River Basin (YRB) in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., faces challenges in reliably characterizing influences of management practices (e.g., reservoir operation and cropland irrigation) on the watershed hydrology. Using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, we evaluated streamflow simulations in the YRB based on different reservoir operation and irrigation schemes. Simulated streamflow with the reservoir operation scheme optimized by the RiverWare model better reproduced measured streamflow than the simulation using default SWAT reservoir operation scheme. Scenarios with irrigation practices demonstrated higher water losses through evapotranspiration (ET), and matched benchmark data better than the scenario that only considered reservoir operations. Results of this study highlight the importance of reliably representing reservoir operations and irrigation management for credible modeling of watershed hydrology. Both SWAT and RiverWare are community-based and have been widely tested and applied for reservoir operations and agricultural watershed modeling in regions across the globe. As such, the methods and findings presented here hold the promise to apply to other intensively managed watersheds to enhance water resources assessment.

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Climate change reduces water availability for agriculture by decreasing non-evaporative irrigation losses

Cited by 63 publications

References 102 publications

When Should Irrigators Invest in More Water‐Efficient Technologies as an Adaptation to Climate Change?

When Should Irrigators Invest in More Water‐Efficient Technologies as an Adaptation to Climate Change?

Incorporating Social System Dynamics in the Columbia River Basin: Food-Energy-Water Resilience and Sustainability Modeling in the Yakima River Basin

Implications of water management representations for watershed hydrologic modeling in the Yakima River Basin

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