Improving irrigation efficiency will be insufficient to meet future water demand in the Nile Basin

Multsch, Sebastian; Elshamy, Mohamed; Batarseh, Sana; Seid, Abdulkarim H.; Frede, Hans‐Georg; Breuer, Lutz

doi:10.1016/j.ejrh.2017.04.007

Cited by 32 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The tool was applied to investigate several topics related to water resources management in recent years, e.g. the predicted future irrigation demands and impact of technology in the Nile river basin (Multsch et al, 2017a), managing desalinated seawater use in agriculture in Saudi Arabia (Multsch et al, 2017b), and characterising groundwater scarcity caused by large scale irrigation in the USA (Multsch et al, 2016).…”

Section: Calculation Of Green and Blue Water Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of potential implications of agricultural irrigation policy on surface water scarcity in Brazil

Multsch¹,

Krol²,

Pahlow³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. Expanding irrigated cropping areas is one of Brazil’s strategies to increase agricultural production. This expansion is constrained by water policy goals to restrict water scarcity to acceptable levels. We therefore analysed the trade-off between levels of acceptable water scarcity, and feasible expansion of irrigation. The appropriateness of water use in agricultural production was assessed in categories ranging from excellent to very critical based on the river flow that is equalled or exceeded for 95 % of the time (Q95) as indicator for physical water availability. The crop water balance components were determined for 166,842 sub-catchments covering all of Brazil. The crops considered were cotton, rice, sugarcane, beans, cassava, corn, soybean and wheat, together accounting for 96 % of the harvested area of irrigated and rainfed agriculture. On currently irrigated land irrigation must be discontinued on 53.6 % (2.30 Mha) for an excellent water scarcity level, on 44.5 % (1.91 Mha) for a comfortable water scarcity level and on 35.2 % (1.51 Mha) for a worrying water scarcity level, in order to avoid critical water scarcity. An expansion of irrigated areas by irrigating all 45.56 Mha of rainfed area would strongly impact surface water resources, resulting in 26.02 Mha experiencing critical and very critical water scarcity. The results show in a spatially differentiated manner that potential future decisions regarding expanding irrigated cropping areas in Brazil must, while pursuing to intensify production practices, consider the likely regional effects on water scarcity levels, in order to reach sustainable agricultural production.

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Section: Calculation Of Green and Blue Water Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of potential implications of agricultural irrigation policy on surface water scarcity in Brazil

Multsch¹,

Krol²,

Pahlow³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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“…When considering the issue of the sustainability of economic growth, the constraints of natural resources and climate change are always present, and the interaction between climate change and economic growth is of increasing concern [1,2]. Technological change, including changes in the the future through complex multidisciplinary models [47][48][49][50]. Moreover, because the technological change of water resources utilization efficiency is often determined by exogenous forces, there is no mechanism to support the predictive theoretical derivation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prediction of Technological Change under Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Regional Differences: A Case Study of Irrigation Water Use Efficiency Changes in Chinese Provinces

et al. 2019

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Technological changes in water use efficiency directly influence regional sustainable development. However, few studies have attempted to predict changes in water use efficiency because of the complex influencing factors and regional diversity. The Chinese Government has established a target of 0.6 for the effective utilization coefficient of irrigation water, but it is not clear how the coefficient will change in different provinces in the future. The purpose of this study is to predict irrigation water use efficiency changes using a conditional convergence model and combined with the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) scenario settings and hydro-economic (HE) classification to group 31 Chinese provinces by their different economic and water resources conditions. The results show that the coefficient exponentially converges to 0.6 in half the provinces under SSP1 (sustainability), SSP2 (middle of the road), and SSP5 (conventional development) by 2030, whereas SSP3 (fragmentation) and SSP4 (inequality) are generally inefficient development pathways. HE-3 provinces (strong economic capacity, substantial hydrological challenges) achieve the greatest efficiency improvements (with all coefficients above 0.6), and SSP1 is a suitable pathway for these provinces. HE-2 provinces (strong economic capacities, low hydrological challenges) have relatively low efficiency because they lack incentives to save water, and SSP1 is also suitable for these provinces. For most HE-1 provinces (low economic capacity, low hydrological challenges), the coefficients are less than 0.6, and efforts are required to enhance their economic capacity under SSP1 or SSP5. HE-4 provinces (low economic capacity, substantial hydrological challenges) would improve efficiency in a cost-efficient manner under SSP2. utilization efficiency of natural resources, is a possible way to solve the current dilemma of sustainable development [3,4], because it has a direct impact on the total scale of natural resource utilization, and thus directly influences whether the regional social economy is in a sustainable development state [5,6]. Technological change in agriculture irrigation water use efficiency is of fundamental significance for solving water scarcity and increasing crop productivity, and achieving highly efficient irrigation is crucial to balancing water resources input and sustainable agricultural economic growth [7][8][9].The theory of technological change generally distinguishes two types of technological change: technological catch-up and technological diffusion. Technological catch-up concerns the knowledge production function and occurs through the mechanism of learning by doing. It requires continuous additional capital inputs and manufacturers, and the labor force must constantly learn and master new skills in the production process, which brings about extensive progress in social productivity [3,[10][11][12]. Technological diffusion is brought about by technological transmission and is mainly realized through open trade, technology transfer,...

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“…The two main tributaries of the Nile River basin (NRB) are the White Nile and the Blue Nile. NRB is facing extreme pressure on its water resources due to alarmingly increasing population (Siam et al, 2017) that is extremely vulnerable in aspects of irrigation, agriculture (Abtew et al, 2014;Multsch et al, 2017), water supplies, and hydropower (Ahmed et al, 2019;Hasan et al , 2018). Owing to its size, the Nile inclines itself to remotely sensed approaches with the high spatial and temporal coverage as the NRB disparate to ground-based in-situ observations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating GRACE products and land surface models to estimate changes in key components of terrestrial water storage in the Nile River Basin

Nigatu¹,

Fan²,

You³

2020

Preprint

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The Nile River Basin (NRB) is facing extreme pressure on its water resources due to an alarmingly increasing population that is extremely vulnerable in aspects of irrigation and hydropower. The NRB ascends itself to remotely sensed approaches with high resolution of spatial and temporal coverage as disparate to ground-based in-situ observations due to its size and limited access from basin countries. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) allow a unique opportunity to investigate the changes in key components of Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS). Differences in tuning parameters and processing strategies result in GRACE TWS solutions with regionally specific variations and error patterns. We explored the spatiotemporal changes of the TWS time series, trend, uncertainties, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) among different GRACE TWS. We had also investigated the key terrestrial water storage components (surface water, soil moisture, and groundwater storage changes). The results show that the uncertainty of GRACE spherical harmonic (SH) solutions are higher than the mass concentration (mascon) over the NRB, and the Center for Space Research-mascons (CSR-M) noted the first best performance. Substantially, significant long-term (2003–2017) negative groundwater and soil moisture trend demonstrates a potential depletion over NRB. Despite an increase in precipitation and TWS time series, the rate of decline noted to increase rapidly from 2008, thus indicating the possibility of human-induced change ( e.g., for irrigation purposes). Thus, the result of this study provides a guiding principle for future studies in TWS change-related hydro-climatic change over NRB and similar basins.

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Improving irrigation efficiency will be insufficient to meet future water demand in the Nile Basin

Cited by 32 publications

References 27 publications

Assessment of potential implications of agricultural irrigation policy on surface water scarcity in Brazil

Assessment of potential implications of agricultural irrigation policy on surface water scarcity in Brazil

Prediction of Technological Change under Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Regional Differences: A Case Study of Irrigation Water Use Efficiency Changes in Chinese Provinces

Integrating GRACE products and land surface models to estimate changes in key components of terrestrial water storage in the Nile River Basin

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