Reliable conjunctive use rules for sustainable irrigated agriculture and reservoir spill control

Schoups, Gerrit; Addams, C. Lee; Minjares, José Luis; Gorelick, Steven M.

doi:10.1029/2006wr005007

Cited by 23 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…irrigation managers of surface water allocation rules that were designed to maintain minimum reservoir outflow levels through extended periods of variable and unknown inflows (14,37).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Like many other postgreen revolution agricultural regions around the world, the YV has struggled to address the offsite impacts of heavy fertilizer use (10)(11)(12), the growing competition for water from other sectors (13,14), and economic and policy conditions that undermine farm profitability (15,16). Such transitions have put new pressures on the YV knowledge system to create and apply different kinds of information at the local level, because support for agricultural extension and research has waned (SI Text has a more complete description of the site and its challenges).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Evolution of the knowledge system for agricultural development in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora, Mexico

McCullough

Matson

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Knowledge systems-networks of linked actors, organizations, and objects that perform a number of knowledge-related functions that link knowledge and know how with action-have played a key role in fostering agricultural development over the last 50 years. We examine the evolution of the knowledge system of the Yaqui Valley, Mexico, a region often described as the home of the green revolution for wheat, tracing changes in the functions of critical knowledge system participants, information flows, and research priorities. Most of the knowledge system's key players have been in place for many decades, although their roles have changed in response to exogenous and endogenous shocks and trends (e.g., drought, policy shifts, and price trends). The system has been agile and able to respond to challenges, in part because of the diversity of players (evolving roles of actors spanning research-decision maker boundaries) and also because of the strong and consistent role of innovative farmers. Although the agricultural research agenda in the Valley is primarily controlled from within the agricultural sector, outside voices have become an important influence in broadening development-and production-oriented perspectives to sustainability perspectives.environmental sustainability | technology adoption | fertilizer and water management O ver the last 50 years, agricultural communities in developing countries have experienced dramatic changes in their requirements for and access to information, knowledge, and know how related to cropping systems and commodity markets (1). As part of a post-World War II effort to enhance agricultural production, research systems focused on development and deployment of improved genetic materials and management practices for key food staple crops (2, 3). Over time, with the changing landscape of agricultural production (4, 5), transformations in global food demand and marketing systems (6), and increasing foci on sustainability objectives, including environmental concerns, these systems have been required to evolve to continue providing relevant support.In this paper, we explore the evolution of knowledge systems for agricultural development that has occurred in the home of the green revolution for wheat. Knowledge systems are networks of linked actors, organizations, and objects that perform a number of knowledge-related functions that link knowledge and know how with action (including research, innovation, development, demonstration, deployment, and adoption).* They include the institutions, human capital, financial resources, and incentives that give such systems the capacity to function. Although knowledge systems are not the result of master design, they can be understood and manipulated in ways that improve their performance. Previous research has highlighted communication and translation among players within knowledge systems as key functions for managing the boundaries between scientific knowledge and decision making (7-9). To date, little attention has been paid to how these functions ch...

show abstract

“…irrigation managers of surface water allocation rules that were designed to maintain minimum reservoir outflow levels through extended periods of variable and unknown inflows (14,37).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of the knowledge system for agricultural development in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora, Mexico

McCullough

Matson

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recently Schoups et al (2006) simulated agriculture in the Yaqui Valley, Mexico where surface water and groundwater is used conjunctively. In this instance, surface reservoirs were also included in the analysis.…”

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hydrologic Trade-Offs in Conjunctive Use Management

Bredehoeft¹

2010

Ground Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An aquifer, in a stream/aquifer system, acts as a storage reservoir for groundwater. Groundwater pumping creates stream depletion that recharges the aquifer. As wells in the aquifer are moved away from the stream, the aquifer acts to filter out annual fluctuations in pumping; with distance the stream depletion tends to become equal to the total pumping averaged as an annual rate, with only a small fluctuation. This is true for both a single well and an ensemble of wells. A typical growing season in much of the western United States is 3 to 4 months. An ensemble of irrigation wells spread more or less uniformly across an aquifer several miles wide, pumping during the growing season, will deplete the stream by approximately one-third of the total amount of water pumped during the growing season. The remaining two-thirds of stream depletion occurs outside the growing season. Furthermore, it takes more than a decade of pumping for an ensemble of wells to reach a steady-state condition in which the impact on the stream is the same in succeeding years. After a decade or more of pumping, the depletion is nearly constant through the year, with only a small seasonal fluctuation: ±10%. Conversely, stream depletion following shutting down the pumping from an ensemble of wells takes more than a decade to fully recover from the prior pumping. Effectively managing a conjunctive groundwater and surface water system requires integrating the entire system into a single management institution with a long-term outlook.

show abstract

“…Since the result is based on a single 10-year period, its robustness needs to be tested over a wide range of future runoff scenarios. This will be investigated in a later study, together with the determination of an optimal operating rule [Schoups et al, 2006].…”

Section: Improved Conjunctive Surface Water -Groundwater Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable conjunctive water management in irrigated agriculture: Model formulation and application to the Yaqui Valley, Mexico

Schoups

Addams

Minjares³

et al. 2006

Water Resources Research

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

[1] This paper investigates strategies to alleviate the effects of droughts on the profitability and sustainability of irrigated agriculture. These strategies include conjunctive management of surface water and groundwater resources, and engineered improvements such as lining of irrigation canals and addition of regional pumping well capacity. A spatially distributed simulation-optimization model was developed for an irrigated system consisting of multiple surface water reservoirs and an alluvial aquifer. The simulation model consists of an agronomic component and simulators describing the hydrologic system. The physical models account for storage and flow through the reservoirs, routing through the irrigation canals, and regional groundwater flow. The agronomic model describes crop productivity as a function of irrigation quantity and salinity, and determines agricultural profit. A profit maximization problem was formulated and solved using large-scale constrained gradient-based optimization. The model was applied to a real-world conjunctive surface water/groundwater management problem in the Yaqui Valley, an irrigated agricultural region in Sonora, Mexico. The model reproduces recorded reductions in agricultural production during a historical drought. These reductions were caused by a decline in surface water availability and limited installed pumping capacity. Results indicate that the impact of the historical 8-year drought could have been significantly reduced without affecting profit in wet years by better managing surface water and groundwater resources. Namely, groundwater could have been more heavily relied upon and surface water allocation capped at a sustainable level as an operating rule. Lining the irrigation canals would have resulted in water savings of 30% of historical reservoir releases during wet years, which could have been used in subsequent drier years to increase agricultural production. The benefits of a greater reliance on groundwater pumping by installing additional wells are limited due to pumping restrictions near the coast to avoid seawater intrusion and due to increased pumping costs.

show abstract

Reliable conjunctive use rules for sustainable irrigated agriculture and reservoir spill control

Cited by 23 publications

References 36 publications

Evolution of the knowledge system for agricultural development in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora, Mexico

Evolution of the knowledge system for agricultural development in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora, Mexico

Hydrologic Trade-Offs in Conjunctive Use Management

Sustainable conjunctive water management in irrigated agriculture: Model formulation and application to the Yaqui Valley, Mexico

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About