Least-Cost Provision of Ecosystem Services from Water: When, Where, and How Much?
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 148, Issue 2
Abstract
Changes in surface or groundwater management influence water use patterns as well as the economic value and sustainability of all water uses. In water-scarce regions, programs that establish environmental flows usually involve reallocating water from another productive use. Few peer-reviewed papers to date have investigated impacts on system-wide economic performance resulting from environmental flow regimes. This work presents an original approach to address that gap by developing and applying a basin-scale hydroeconomic optimization model of North America’s Middle Rio Grande Basin to explore impacts of environmental pulse flows on the region’s economy and water stocks. The model accounts for surface and groundwater storage, irrigation, urban, recreational, and environmental demands; surface water inflows under various climate scenarios; groundwater pumping and recharge; substitute water prices; crop water use; evaporation; as well as institutional constraints governing water use. Results show that climate change, in the form of highly variable inflows, has an impact on the total and marginal cost of implementing environmental pulse flows, amplified by the conjunctive nature of the system.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the input and support of project stakeholders that contributed valuable input into this work. This work is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, under Award No. 2015-68007-23130, US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch Project No. 1012856, and the National Science Foundation, Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure under Award No. 1835897. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the US Department of Agriculture, nor the National Science Foundation.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 148 • Issue 2 • February 2022
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 28, 2020
Accepted: Oct 20, 2021
Published online: Dec 2, 2021
Published in print: Feb 1, 2022
Discussion open until: May 2, 2022
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Aquatic habitats
- Business management
- Ecosystems
- Engineering fundamentals
- Environmental engineering
- Financial management
- Groundwater
- Groundwater management
- Infrastructure
- Models (by type)
- Optimization models
- Practice and Profession
- Recreation
- Urban and regional development
- Water (by type)
- Water and water resources
- Water management
- Water storage
- Water supply
- Water supply systems
- Water use
- Water-based recreation
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