The rapid growth of demand in agricultural production has created water scarcity issues worldwide. Simultaneously, climate change scenarios have projected that more frequent and severe droughts are likely to occur. Adaptive water resources management has been suggested as one strategy to better coordinate surface water and groundwater resources (i.e., conjunctive water use) to address droughts. In this study, we enhanced an aggregated water resource management tool that represents integrated agriculture, water, energy, and social systems. We applied this tool to the Yakima River Basin (YRB) in Washington State, USA. We selected four indicators of system resilience and sustainability to evaluate four adaptation methods associated with adoption behaviors in alleviating drought impacts on agriculture under RCP4.5 and RCP 8.5 climate change scenarios. We analyzed the characteristics of four adaptation methods, including greenhouses, crop planting time, irrigation technology, and managed aquifer recharge as well as alternating supply and demand dynamics to overcome drought impact. The results show that climate conditions with severe and consecutive droughts require more financial and natural resources to achieve well-implemented adaptation strategies. For long-term impact analysis, managed aquifer recharge appeared to be a cost-effective and easy-to-adopt option, whereas water entitlements are likely to get exhausted during multiple consecutivemore »
Learning and flexibility for water supply infrastructure planning under groundwater resource uncertainty
Water supply infrastructure planning in groundwater-dependent regions is often challenged by uncertainty in future groundwater resource availability. Many major aquifer systems face long-term water table decline due to unsustainable withdrawals. However, many regions, especially those in the developing world, have a scarcity of groundwater data. This creates large uncertainties in groundwater resource predictions and decisions about whether to develop alternative supply sources. Developing infrastructure too soon can lead to unnecessary and expensive irreversible investments, but waiting too long can threaten water supply reliability. This study develops an adaptive infrastructure planning framework that applies Bayesian learning on groundwater observations to assess opportunities to learn about groundwater availability in the future and adapt infrastructure plans. This approach allows planners in data scarce regions to assess under what conditions a flexible infrastructure planning approach, in which initial plans are made but infrastructure development is deferred, can mitigate the risk of overbuilding infrastructure while maintaining water supply reliability in the face of uncertainty. This framework connects engineering options analysis from infrastructure planning to groundwater resources modeling. We demonstrate a proof-of-concept on a desalination planning case for the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where poor characterization of a fossil aquifer creates uncertainty in how more »
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10303202
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research Letters
- Volume:
- 14
- Issue:
- 11
- Page Range or eLocation-ID:
- Article No. 114022
- ISSN:
- 1748-9326
- Publisher:
- IOP Publishing
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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