Downside risk of aquifer depletion
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Downside risk of aquifer depletion Mani Rouhi Rad1 · A. Araya2 · Zachary T. Zambreski3 Received: 4 December 2019 / Accepted: 4 July 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Groundwater aquifers support agricultural production in many parts of the world. Rapidly declining aquifer levels can have significant negative implications for the sustainability of irrigated agriculture. In this paper, we study the effects of declining well capacities on the downside risk of irrigated agricultural production, defined as the standard deviation of profits that are below the average profit. We simulate seasonal crop yield and profits for three different crops, namely, maize, wheat, and grain sorghum and five different soil types for Finney County in Kansas which overlies the high plains aquifer under current climatic conditions and under the projected climate change scenario with RCP4.5. We find that lower well capacities not only result in lower average profits for all three crops, but they also result in an increase in downside risk. However, we also find that there is significant heterogeneity in downside risk across different crops and soil types. Our results highlight the importance of downside risk for the sustainability of irrigated production under declining aquifer levels and climate change. Keywords Downside risk · Production risk · Aquifer depletion · Climate change · High Plains Aquifer · Ogallala
Introduction Groundwater aquifers support agricultural production in many parts of the world. Rapidly declining aquifer levels can have significant implications for the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in these regions. A major concern about aquifer depletion is the increase in the risk of irrigated production (Peterson et al. 2003; Foster et al. 2015). As aquifer levels decline, well capacity (or well yield), which is the rate that groundwater can be extracted from a well, declines (Hecox et al. 2002; Brookfield 2016). Declining well capacities limit the ability of a producer to apply irrigation during the critical stages of the growing season, increasing the risk of lower crop yields.
* Mani Rouhi Rad [email protected] 1
Department of Agricultural Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA
2
Department of Agronomy, and Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sustainable Intensification, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA
3
Department of Agronomy, Kansas State University, Throckmorton Hall, Plant Sciences Center, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
In this paper, we examine the effects of declining well capacities on the downside risk of irrigated agricultural production. Downside risk is the extent of losses from an uncertain outcome. When facing uncertain outcomes, several studies argue that individuals often weight losses more than the gains (Menezes et al. 1980; Bigman 1996). While the downside risk of agricultural production has been considered within the literature (Antle 1987, 2010; Di Falco and Chavas 2006; Di Falco a
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