The Benefit of Using an Ensemble of Global Hydrological Models in Surface Water Availability for Irrigation Area Plannin
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The Benefit of Using an Ensemble of Global Hydrological Models in Surface Water Availability for Irrigation Area Planning Alexander Kaune 1,2,3 & Patricia López 4 & Anouk Gevaert 5 & Ted Veldkamp 5 & Micha Werner 1,4 & Charlotte de Fraiture 1,2 Received: 19 December 2017 / Accepted: 30 March 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Hydrological data and information on the availability of water are essential to support water allocation decisions in irrigated agriculture, especially under increasingly water scarce conditions. However, in many agricultural regions hydrological information is scarce, leading to sub-optimal water allocation decisions and crop yield reduction. Here we assess the benefit of using surface water availability estimates derived from an ensemble of global hydrological models for establishing the potential area that can be irrigated; where the size is determined based on agreed water supply reliability targets. Risky outcomes of the annual agricultural production due to the true occurrence of water scarcity are generated for both the reference and established irrigation areas, resulting in a Relative Utility Value (RUV) that expresses the utility of the information used. Results show that using an ensemble of global hydrological models provides more robust estimates of the planned area compared to using any of the single global models that constitutes the ensemble. A comparison of the information content in the ensemble shows that an ensemble with a period of record of 15 years has an information content equivalent to a single model of 30 years. Keywords Hydrological information . Waterallocationdecisions . Irrigated agriculture . Irrigation demand
* Alexander Kaune [email protected]
1
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands
2
Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands
3
FutureWater, Wageningen, the Netherlands
4
Deltares, Delft, the Netherlands
5
VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Kaune A. et al.
1 Introduction Adequate prediction tools for water resources assessment are key to provide a better understanding of present and future water scarcity, and its impacts on human livelihoods, the environment and agricultural development; especially in regions where hydrological data is scarce (Bloschl et al. 2014; Masafu et al. 2016; Tegegne et al. 2017). In these regions the potential of using additional hydrological information from hydrological models is high as these can help enhance water resource availability assessments, and decrease the number of sub-optimal water allocation decisions (Kaune et al. 2017). Several global hydrological models have been developed (Bierkens 2015; Sood and Smakhtin 2015; Kauffeldt et al. 2016) and have been widely applied to climate change and water scarcity impact assessment, and improved river discharge estimations (van Beek et al. 2011; Hanasaki et al. 2013; Veldkamp et al. 2015; Zhao et al. 2017; Gosling et al. 2017; Lopez Lopez 2018). Collaborative projects such as the Global Water System Pr
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