The Effects of Adaptation Strategies on Water Resources Management in Mashhad Plain: The Application of Hydro-economic-behavioural Modeling

مجله اقتصاد و توسعه کشاورزی

Article 7, Volume 36, Issue 4 - Serial Number 57, January 2023, Pages 431-445   

Document Type: Research Article-en

DOI: 10.22067/jead.2022.78289.1151

Authors

H. Sakhdari¹; S. Ziaee^{* 2}; M. Ahmadpour Borazjani²; H. Mohammadi²

¹Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iranity

²Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran

Abstract

Khorasan Razavi Province suffers from the most critical groundwater resources in Iran, i.e. the groundwater decline has reached 1 m; 34 out of 37 water plains are banned in Khorasan Razavi Province. Recently, Mashhad plain has been fighting with the crisis of drought and water scarcity. Illegal harvesting from groundwater resources and the warming trend caused by change in climate have exacerbated the crisis. Comprehensive water resources management, assuming the complicated nature of water-related issues, rapid growth of population, water requirement for a variety of purposes, and limited water resources, requires novel methods to stack up technical, economic, environmental, social, and logical perspectives in an integrated forum. One of the tools for comprehensive water resources management is utilizing hydro-economic models to simulate the present status of drainage basins and evaluate the impacts of different scenarios and policies. The current study used a hydro-economic model to simulate the hydrological status of Mashhad plain and evaluate the impacts of different scenarios. Then, the agent-based model (ABM) was used in order to reach an agreement with stakeholders on executing different conservation scenarios. The hydro-economic model results revealed that reducing the water demand of the agricultural sector and, as a result, surface and groundwater consumption is possible through following adaptation scenarios. Implementing various adaptation scenarios may alter the present cultivation pattern. Moreover, the ABM results showed a significant difference between the volume of available water, due to the execution of strategies, and water demand, bringing about the lack of farmers’ cooperation regarding the implementation of conservation scenarios. However, through applying some incentive policies, a number of representative farmers may agree to pursue adaptation scenarios.

Keywords

Adaptation strategies; Water resources; Hydro-economic model; Mashhad Plain

References

1. Akhbari, M., & Grigg, N.S. (2015). Managing water resources conflicts: Modelling behaviour in a decision tool. Water Resources Management 29(14): 5201-5216. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-015-1113-9.
2. Pouran, R., Raghofer, H., Ghasemi, A., & Bazazan, F. (2016). Calculating the economic value of virtual water with the approach of maximizing the productivity of irrigation water. Applied Economic Studies of Iran 21: 189-212. (In Persian with English abstract)
3.  Barthel, R., Janisch, S., Nickel, D., Trifkovic, A., & Hörhan, T. (2010). Using the multiactor-approach in Glowa-Danube to simulate decisions for the water supply sector under conditions of global climate change. Water Resources Management 24(2): 239-275. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-009-9445-y.
4. Dawadi, S., & Ahmad, S. (2013). Evaluating the impact of demand-side management on water resources under changing climatic conditions and increasing population. Journal of Environmental Management 114: 261-275.
5.  Edwards, P., Preece, A., Pignotti, E., Polhill, G., & Gotts, N. (2005, June). Lessons learnt from deployment of a social simulation tool to the semantic Grid. In Proceedings of First International Conference on e-Social Science (pp. 22-24).
6. Esteve, P., Varela-Ortega, C., Blanco-Gutiérrez, I., & Downing, T.E. (2015). A hydro-economic model for the assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation in irrigated agriculture. Ecological Economics 120: 49-58.
7. Forni, L. G., Medellín-Azuara, J., Tansey, M., Young, C., Purkey, D., & Howitt, R. (2016). Integrating complex economic and hydrologic planning models: An application for drought under climate change analysis. Water Resources and Economics 16: 15-27. https://doi.org/10.22067/jead.2021.17801.0.
8. Gleick, P.H., & Palaniappan, M. (2010). Peak water limits to freshwater withdrawal and use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(25): 11155-11162.
9. Harou, J.J., Pulido-Velazquez, M., Rosenberg, D. E., Medellín-Azuara, J., Lund, J.R., & Howitt, R.E. (2009). Hydro-economic models: Concepts, design, applications, and future prospects. Journal of Hydrology 375(3-4): 627-643.
10. Hosseini, S.A., & Bagheri, A. (2011). Dynamic modeling of Mashhad plain water resources system for analyzing sustainable development strategies. Journal of Water and Wastewater 4: 39-28. (In Persian with English abstract)
11.  Nasirzadeh, F., Afshar, A., & Khanzadi, M. (2008). Dynamic risk analysis in construction projects. Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering 35(8): 820-831.
12. Nazim Al Sadat, M., Samani, N., Bari, A., & Molayi Niko, M. (2006). The effective force of El Nino-Southern Oscillation phenomenon on climate change in Iran, using precipitation data analysis. Iranian Journal of Science and Technology 4: 565-555. (In Persian with English abstract)
13. Nikolic, V.V., & Simonovic, S.P. (2015). Multi-method modeling framework for support of integrated water resources management. Environmental Processes 2(3): 461-483.
14. Shahnooshi, N., Naqvi, S., & Azam Rahmati, A. (2015). The relationship between population and water crisis and its impact on macroeconomic variables. First National Water Economics Conference, Tehran: Iran Water and Wastewater Engineering Company. (In Persian with English abstract)
15. Sherafatpour, Z., Roozbahani, A., & Hasani, Y. (2019). Agricultural water allocation by integration of hydro-economic modeling with Bayesian networks and random forest approaches. Water Resources Management 33(7): 2277-2299.
16.  Ward, F.A., & Pulido-Velazquez, M. (2008). Water conservation in irrigation can increase water use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(47): 18215-18220. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0805554105.
17. Yazdani, Qanadzadeh, M., & Faiz Elahi, H. (2016). Quantitative and qualitative analysis of groundwater resources of Mashhad-Chenaran plain. The third international conference on research in agriculture and environment, permanent secretariat of the conference, Hamedan. (In Persian with English abstract)
18. Zekri, S., Madani, K., Bazargan-Lari, M.R., Kotagama, H., & Kalbus, E. (2017). Feasibility of adopting smart water meters in aquifer management: An integrated hydro-economic analysis. Agricultural Water Management 181: 85-93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2016.11.022.