Consideration of Climate Variability and Change in Agricultural Water Resources Planning
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Volume 133, Issue 3
Abstract
Although agriculture and its use of water resources are obviously sensitive to climatic conditions, past research has seldom identified the effects of climate variability and climate change on the fully developed relationship between crop yield and irrigation. There is potentially great value in understanding the role of climatic uncertainty on this relationship because of the dependence of agriculture on irrigation and the scale of water consumption for irrigation. Probability distributions of crop-water production functions (CWPF-PDs) are demonstrated as being useful encapsulations of the climate-yield-irrigation relationship for decisions at various levels of time and space. Combined with reliable climate teleconnections or climate forecasts, CWPF-PDs can be a central decision support tool for questions of risk and reliability. For long planning horizons, potential climate change predicted by multiple general circulation models (GCMs) can be assessed in the context of agricultural water resources. By analysis of changes in the CWPF-PDs, conclusions regarding the efficacy and sustainability of water resources and agricultural policies can be made. A semihypothetical case study for the Lake Victoria Basin in East Africa is used to illustrate these methodologies, and potential future climate impacts as predicted by the CGCM1, ECHAM3, and HadCM2 GCMs are discussed.
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Acknowledgments
The work presented herein was funded as part of the Nile Basin Water Resources Project (GCP/INT/752/ITA). This project was carried out by the Georgia Water Resources Institute (GWRI), was funded by the Government of Italy, and was executed for the Nile Basin nations by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. GWRI and the writers are grateful to the Nile Basin nations (Burundi, Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda), their focal point institutions, their Project Steering Committee (PSC) members, and their National Modelers for working with us on this project. The writers are also grateful to the Government of Italy and to FAO for sponsoring this project and for providing dependable logistical and technical support through the FAO offices in Rome and Entebbe. Last, they appreciate the comments of two anonymous reviewers.
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Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 133 • Issue 3 • May 2007
Pages: 275 - 285
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Jan 26, 2005
Accepted: Dec 29, 2005
Published online: May 1, 2007
Published in print: May 2007
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