Transition Pathways to Sustainable Agricultural Water Management: A Review of Integrated Modeling Approaches

Abstract

Agricultural water management (AWM) is an interdisciplinary concern, cutting across traditional domains such as agronomy, climatology, geology, economics, and sociology. Each of these disciplines has developed numerous process‐based and empirical models for AWM. However, models that simulate all major hydrologic, water quality, and crop growth processes in agricultural systems are still lacking. As computers become more powerful, more researchers are choosing to integrate existing models to account for these major processes rather than building new cross‐disciplinary models. Model integration carries the hope that, as in a real system, the sum of the model will be greater than the parts. However, models based upon simplified and unrealistic assumptions of physical or empirical processes can generate misleading results which are not useful for informing policy. In this article, we use literature and case studies from the High Plains Aquifer and Southeastern United States regions to elucidate the challenges and opportunities associated with integrated modeling for AWM and recommend conditions in which to use integrated models. Additionally, we examine the potential contributions of integrated modeling to AWM — the actual practice of conserving water while maximizing productivity. Editor's note: This paper is part of the featured series on Optimizing Ogallala Aquifer Water Use to Sustain Food Systems. See the February 2019 issue for the introduction and background to the series.

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“…Models are useful because they are simplified simulations of reality (11) . Hence, in order to reduce the cost and time of evaluating different irrigation management strategies for peanut production, they were first evaluated using the DSSAT model.…”

Featured Series Introduction: Optimizing Ogallala Aquifer Water Use to Sustain Food Systems

“…The paper by Haacker et al (2019) provides a comprehensive review on coupling models and identifies challenges and opportunities to integrate models from disparate fields. This introductory segment of the featured series contains four papers.…”

“…Integrating these models provides opportunities to provide systems-oriented solutions where the end result is better than the sum of the parts. The paper by Haacker et al (2019) provides a comprehensive review on coupling models and identifies challenges and opportunities to integrate models from disparate fields. They review current literature and provide recommendations for integration and discuss how these integrated models can be used to improve agricultural productivity while promoting water conservation.…”

MOD$$AT: A hydro-economic modeling framework for aquifer management in irrigated agricultural regions

“…Hydro-economic models are important tools for studying the effectiveness of water management policies (Brown et al, 2015;Harou et al, 2009). These integrated models (Haacker et al, 2019;Voinov and Shugart, 2013) attempt to leverage the strengths of both physical models and economic models to study the costs and benefits of different policies and associated changes in physical and climatic systems (Adamowicz et al, 2019). An ideal hydro-economic model for irrigation incorporates the water cycle, crop water use and growth, and the effect of incentives and externalities resulting from the interplay between the physical systems and producer irrigation decisions.…”