Groundwater depletion and climate change: future prospects of crop production in the Central High Plains Aquifer

Cotterman, Kayla A.; Kendall, A. D.; Basso, Bruno; Hyndman, D. W.

doi:10.1007/s10584-017-1947-7

Cited by 63 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Significantly, these factors typically are not 805 considered in assessments of the impacts of aquifer depletion on agricultural productivity and resilience to drought (e.g. Cotterman et al (2018)), which therefore are likely to lead to underestimate the potential value of policies to conserve groundwater resources as a buffer against future climate variability and change.…”

Section: Impacts Of Water Availability Constraints 775mentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating Crop-Water Production Functions Using Crop Growth Models to Support Water Policy Assessments

Foster

Brozović

2018

Ecological Economics

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Crop-water production functions are important tools for quantifying effects of water scarcity and climate change on agricultural production, and are also widely used within hydro-economic models to support design of inter-sectoral water management policies. Here, we introduce a new methodology for simulating crop-water production functions using process-based crop growth models, which captures explicitly the interacting effects of farmers' intraseasonal irrigation decision-making, stochastic weather conditions, and physical and socioeconomic water supply constraints on seasonal crop yield response to water. Through a case study application for groundwater irrigated corn production in the Texas High Plains, we demonstrate that constraints to irrigation scheduling caused by aquifer depletion, combined with farmers' limited foresight of future weather conditions, have significant impacts on estimated seasonal crop-water production functions. Our results highlight that the failure to account for these factors fully in previous simulation approaches will lead to errors in estimates of the impacts of groundwater depletion on farmers' future resilience to drought and climate change. Our proposed simulation methodology is generalizable to different production systems or crop growth models, and provides a tool for assessing how economic benefits derived from irrigation vary spatially and temporally due to heterogeneity in biophysical conditions and irrigation practices.

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Section: Impacts Of Water Availability Constraints 775mentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating Crop-Water Production Functions Using Crop Growth Models to Support Water Policy Assessments

Foster

Brozović

2018

Ecological Economics

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“…In the United States, the High Plains Aquifer (HPA, often labeled by its predominant geologic unit, the Ogallala Formation) supports more than $20 billion in annual economic activity (Ashworth 2006). However, water-level declines threaten the continued viability of irrigated agriculture over much of the aquifer, particularly in areas of low recharge concentrated in the central and southern regions (Scanlon et al 2012, Haacker et al 2016, Cotterman et al 2018.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying irrigation adaptation strategies in response to stakeholder-driven groundwater management in the US High Plains Aquifer

Deines

Kendall

Butler

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Irrigation enhances agricultural yields and stabilizes farmer incomes, but overexploitation has depleted groundwater resources around the globe. Strategies to address this sustainability challenge differ widely. Socio-ecological systems research suggests that management of common pool resources like groundwater would benefit from localized approaches that combine self-organization along with active monitoring. In 2012, the US state of Kansas established a Local Enhanced Management Area (LEMA) program, empowering farmers to work with local and state officials to develop five-year, enforceable groundwater conservation programs. Here, we assessed the efficacy of the first LEMA implemented from 2013 to 2017 using a causal impact methodology based on Bayesian structural time series that is new to agrohydrology. Compared to control scenarios, we found that the LEMA reduced water use by 31% over the five-year period, with early indications of stabilizing groundwater levels. Three main conservation strategies can lead to reduced water use: (1) reducing irrigated area, (2) reducing irrigation amount applied to existing crops through improved efficiency, and/or (3) switching to crops that require less water. To partition water savings among these strategies, we combined satellite-derived irrigated areas and crop type maps with well records. We found that farmers were able to largely maintain irrigated area and achieved the majority of pumping reductions (72%) from improvements in irrigation efficiency, followed by expansion of crops with lower water demand (19%). The results of this analysis demonstrate that conservation programs that are irrigatordriven with regulatory oversight can provide a path toward sustainability in stressed aquifers.

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“…soil moisture sensors), reducing energy costs of irrigation and increasing overall farm profitability. Improved irrigation management may also contribute to regional conservation of groundwater as a buffer against future drought [16,50] and help to minimize pumping impacts on freshwater ecosystems [51], although the magnitude of these benefits would depend on the hydrological effects of changes in irrigation patterns on return flows to the underlying aquifer [52]. Conversely, we also show that there are subsets of producers who may have already adapted irrigation management practices successfully to reduce water use in times of physical or economic scarcity without impacting crop yields significantly.…”

Section: Implications and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing landscape scale heterogeneity in irrigation water use with remote sensing andin situmonitoring

Foster

Gonçalves²,

Campos³

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Understanding how irrigation is used across agricultural landscapes is essential to support efforts to grow more food while reducing pressures on limited freshwater resources. However, to date, few studies have analyzed the underlying spatial and temporal variability in farmers' individual water use decisions at a landscape scale. We compare estimates of irrigation water requirements derived using state-of-the-art remote sensing models with metered abstraction records for 1400 fields over a 13 year period in the US state of Nebraska, one of the world's most intensively irrigated agricultural regions. We show that farmers' observed water use decisions often diverge significantly from biophysical estimates of crop irrigation requirements. In particular, our findings are consistent with widespread use of water conservation practices by farmers in drought years as an adaptive response to rising irrigation costs and regulatory water supply constraints in these years. We also demonstrate that, in any individual year, farmers observed water use exhibits large field-to-field variability, which cannot be explained fully by differences in weather, soil type, crop choice, or technology. Our results highlight the value of using both in situ monitoring and remote sensing to evaluate farmers' individual water use behavior and understand likely responses to future changes in climate or water policy. Moreover, our findings also demonstrate potential challenges for current efforts in developed and developing countries to apply model-based approaches for field-level water use accounting and enforcement of irrigation water rights.

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Groundwater depletion and climate change: future prospects of crop production in the Central High Plains Aquifer

Cited by 63 publications

References 48 publications

Simulating Crop-Water Production Functions Using Crop Growth Models to Support Water Policy Assessments

Simulating Crop-Water Production Functions Using Crop Growth Models to Support Water Policy Assessments

Quantifying irrigation adaptation strategies in response to stakeholder-driven groundwater management in the US High Plains Aquifer

Assessing landscape scale heterogeneity in irrigation water use with remote sensing andin situmonitoring

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