Impacts of Near‐Term Climate Change on Irrigation Demands and Crop Yields in the Columbia River Basin

Rajagopalan, K.; Chinnayakanahalli, K.; Stöckle, Claudio O.; Nelson, Roger; Kruger, Chad E.; Brady, Michael P.; Malek, Keyvan; Dinesh, S.; Barber, Michael E.; Hamlet, Alan F.; Yorgey, Georgine; Adam, J. C.

doi:10.1002/2017wr020954

Cited by 42 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 79 publications

(141 reference statements)

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“…The Columbia River drains the CRB and represents the fourth largest river in the continental United States. The water resources in the CRB have been extensively exploited in the past 70 years to meet various needs such as hydropower production, flood control, agricultural withdrawals, instream flow requirements for fish, and recreational needs [73].…”

Section: The Test Area and Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Satellite-Based Evapotranspiration in Hydrological Model Calibration

Jiang

Tao

et al. 2020

Remote Sensing

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Hydrological models are usually calibrated against observed streamflow (Qobs), which is not applicable for ungauged river basins. A few studies have exploited remotely sensed evapotranspiration (ETRS) for model calibration but their effectiveness on streamflow simulation remains uncertain. This paper investigates the use of ETRS in the hydrological calibration of a widely used land surface model coupled with a source–sink routing scheme and global optimization algorithm for 28 natural river basins. A baseline simulation is a setup based on the latest model developments and inputs. Sensitive parameters are determined for Qobs and ETRS-based model calibrations, respectively, through comprehensive sensitivity tests. The ETRS-based model calibration results in a mean Kling–Gupta Efficiency (KGE) value of 0.54 for streamflow simulation; 61% of the river basins have KGE > 0.5 in the validation period, which is consistent with the calibration period and provides a significant improvement over the baseline. Compared to Qobs, the ETRS calibration produces better or similar streamflow simulations in 29% of the basins, while further significant improvements are achieved when either better ET or precipitation observations are used. Furthermore, the model results show better or similar performance in 68% of the basins and outperform the baseline simulations in 90% of the river basins using model parameters from the best ETRS calibration runs. This study confirms that with reasonable precipitation input, the ETRS-based spatially distributed calibration can efficiently tune parameters for better ET and streamflow simulations. The application of ETRS for global scale hydrological model calibration promises even better streamflow accuracy as the satellite-based ETRS observations continue to improve.

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Section: The Test Area and Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Satellite-Based Evapotranspiration in Hydrological Model Calibration

Jiang

Tao

et al. 2020

Remote Sensing

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“…VIC-CropSyst-v1.0 was originally developed and used to forecast the impact of climate change on CRB water supply and irrigation water demand (Yorgey, et al, 2011;Rajagopalan et al, 2017). This version was created using VIC (v4.0.7) and CropSyst (v4.15).…”

Section: Previous Versions Of Vic-cropsystmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…VIC-CropSyst-v1.1 was slightly modified and used by Liu et al (2013). Rajagopalan et al (2017) also used VIC-CropSyst-v1.1 to evaluate the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity in the CRB. This paper describes the fully coupled version of the VIC-CropSyst model (version 2).…”

Section: Previous Versions Of Vic-cropsystmentioning

confidence: 99%

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VIC–CropSyst-v2: A regional-scale modeling platform to simulate the nexus of climate, hydrology, cropping systems, and human decisions

et al. 2017

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Abstract. Food supply is affected by a complex nexus of land, atmosphere, and human processes, including short- and long-term stressors (e.g., drought and climate change, respectively). A simulation platform that captures these complex elements can be used to inform policy and best management practices to promote sustainable agriculture. We have developed a tightly coupled framework using the macroscale variable infiltration capacity (VIC) hydrologic model and the CropSyst agricultural model. A mechanistic irrigation module was also developed for inclusion in this framework. Because VIC–CropSyst combines two widely used and mechanistic models (for crop phenology, growth, management, and macroscale hydrology), it can provide realistic and hydrologically consistent simulations of water availability, crop water requirements for irrigation, and agricultural productivity for both irrigated and dryland systems. This allows VIC–CropSyst to provide managers and decision makers with reliable information on regional water stresses and their impacts on food production. Additionally, VIC–CropSyst is being used in conjunction with socioeconomic models, river system models, and atmospheric models to simulate feedback processes between regional water availability, agricultural water management decisions, and land–atmosphere interactions. The performance of VIC–CropSyst was evaluated on both regional (over the US Pacific Northwest) and point scales. Point-scale evaluation involved using two flux tower sites located in agricultural fields in the US (Nebraska and Illinois). The agreement between recorded and simulated evapotranspiration (ET), applied irrigation water, soil moisture, leaf area index (LAI), and yield indicated that, although the model is intended to work on regional scales, it also captures field-scale processes in agricultural areas.

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“…Crop responses to climate change vary spatially (Rajagopalan et al, ; Thornton et al, ). Therefore, to analyze climate change‐induced agricultural decisions at the regional scale, distributed information on weather, soil, crops, irrigation systems, and water rights is needed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Should Irrigators Invest in More Water‐Efficient Technologies as an Adaptation to Climate Change?

Malek

Adam

Stöckle

et al. 2018

Water Resources Research

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The western U.S. is expected to experience more frequent and severe droughts as a result of climate change, with potentially large impacts on agricultural production and the economy. Irrigated farmers have multiple options for minimizing the impact of drought including switching to more efficient irrigation technologies. More efficient technologies that increase the fraction of the water available to the crop root zone would allow farmers to maintain current production levels with less water. However, these systems are capital intensive. The objective of this study is to explore when (and under what climatic conditions) it makes economic sense for farmers to invest in new irrigation systems. We examine this in the Yakima River Basin in Washington State of the U.S. We use VIC‐CropSyst, a large‐scale grid‐based modeling framework that mechanistically simulates hydrologic and agricultural processes. Water supply simulated by VIC‐CropSyst drives a river system and water management model (YAK‐RW). A computational platform was developed to perform the economic analysis for each grid cell, crop type, and future climate scenario separately, which allowed us to explore whether the implementation of more efficient irrigation systems would be economically viable. Our results indicate that investing in a more efficient irrigation system improves agricultural economy of the Yakima River Basin (9% −25%). We also show that at the farm level, more significant droughts can provide economic incentives for investment up to a point. For severe climate change projections, droughts become frequent and severe enough that economic benefits of improving water use efficiency do not exceed investment costs.

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Impacts of Near‐Term Climate Change on Irrigation Demands and Crop Yields in the Columbia River Basin

Cited by 42 publications

References 79 publications

Satellite-Based Evapotranspiration in Hydrological Model Calibration

Satellite-Based Evapotranspiration in Hydrological Model Calibration

VIC–CropSyst-v2: A regional-scale modeling platform to simulate the nexus of climate, hydrology, cropping systems, and human decisions

When Should Irrigators Invest in More Water‐Efficient Technologies as an Adaptation to Climate Change?

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