The use of a hydrological-economic model to assess sustainability in groundwater-dependent agriculture in drylands

Valderrama, Jaime Martínez; Ibáñez, Javier; Alcalá, Francisco; Domı́nguez, A.; Yassin, Mohammed; Puigdefábregas, Juan

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2011.03.003

Cited by 22 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Key desertification drivers are often ignored or minimized. This is the case of the overexploitation of groundwater, an invisible problem whose magnitude has skyrocketed in the last decades with the irrigation boom experienced by many drylands worldwide [14,15]. Another source of misunderstanding is the association of desertification to the expansion of deserts [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unraveling Misunderstandings about Desertification: The Paradoxical Case of the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin in Southeast Spain

Martínez‐Valderrama

Guirado

Maestre

2020

Land

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From its origins, the concept of desertification has been controversial. The prevailing confusion between two desertification visions, one that considers it as the expansion of deserts and another that emphasizes its anthropogenic component, has been transferred to society. Here we illustrate misunderstandings about desertification using a very illustrative case from the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin (Almeria, Spain), where striking badlands that are often used as an image of desertification coexist with an intensive olive agriculture that is irreversibly deteriorating the only oasis in continental Europe (Los Molinos spring). The olive tree is a traditional Mediterranean dryland crop and until the 1950s only about 200 ha were irrigated in this area. However, the profitability of the crop has caused irrigation to expand to 4400 ha in the last two decades. The process of intensification has been reinforced giving way to super-intensive irrigation, which involves going from 210 to 1550 trees/ha, which in a few years already occupies more than 1500 ha. The effects on the water balance of the aquifer feeding these crops have been severe, and the flow of the Los Molinos spring has gone from more than 40 L/s for the period 1970–2000 to the current 7.28 L/s. Unraveling the mechanisms of land degradation and its main drivers are the first step to propose management actions to achieve a more sustainable use of resources and to combat desertification.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unraveling Misunderstandings about Desertification: The Paradoxical Case of the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin in Southeast Spain

Martínez‐Valderrama

Guirado

Maestre

2020

Land

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“…(i) GDM1 (rangelands): water erosion in rangelands and shrublands [28,37,44,45] for Dehesas in Cáceres province (DL3) and Sierra de Los Filabres in Almería province (DL5) (ii) GDM2 (croplands): water erosion in extensive croplands for olive orchards (DL1) and wheat/ sunflower crops rotation (DL2) in Córdoba province [46] (iii) GDM3 (irrigation agriculture): hydrological models linked to groundwater-based irrigation agriculture [36,47,48] for Eastern La Mancha aquifer in Ciudad Real and Albacete provinces apply to DL4…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even more, the computational system is ready to be exported to other countries. GDM has been already adapted to study groundwater-dependent oases in Morocco [56]; Alcalá et al [66,48], Greek rangelands [37], and Algerian steppe rangelands [50]. Given that all the UNCCD signatory countries are committed to develop their NPCDs, this kind of tools can help threatened regions to spot desertification processes in their initial stages.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

SAT: A Software for Assessing the Risk of Desertification in Spain

Martínez‐Valderrama

Ibáñez

Alcalá

et al. 2020

Scientific Programming

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Desertification is a major global environmental issue exacerbated by climate change. Strategies to combat desertification include prevention which seeks to reverse the process before the system reaches the stable desertified state. One of these initiatives is to implement early warning tools. This paper presents SAT (the Spanish acronym for Early Warning System), a decision support system (DSS), for assessing the risk of desertification in Spain, where 20% of the land has already been desertified and 1% is in active degradation. SAT relies on three versions of a Generic Desertification Model (GDM) that integrates economics and ecology under the predator-prey paradigm. The models have been programmed using Vensim, a type of software used to build and simulate System Dynamics (SD) models. Through Visual Basic programming, these models are operated from the Excel environment. In addition to the basic simulation exercises, specially designed tools have been coupled to assess the risk of desertification and determine the ranking of the most influential factors of the process. The users targeted by SAT are government land-use planners as well as desertification experts. SAT tool is implemented for five case studies, each one of them representing a desertification syndrome identified in Spain. Given the general nature of the tool and the fact that all United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) signatory countries are committed to developing their National Plans to Combat Desertification (NPCD), SAT could be exported to regions threatened by desertification and expanded to cover more case studies.

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“…To provide two examples on these models, Valderrama et al (2011) deals with the assessment of sustainability in the exploitation of groundwater by agriculture in arid and semi-arid lands. They use equations to represent water stocks and the use of irrigation water in agriculture, and link them to farms' gross margins in two regions.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modern Trends in Agricultural Development in Cameroon and Ways to Ensure Its Sustainability

Anaciet

2019

Ekonomìka ta upravlìnnâ APK

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It has been established that agriculture is the backbone of Cameroon's economy, where 80% of the labor force is engaged in the agricultural sector and provides 22.3% of gross domestic product and 30% of its export revenues. The investigated branch forms the commodity supply of agricultural products both on the domestic and foreign markets, the following types of products: cocoa, coffee, cotton, bananas, palm oil, tobacco, tea, pineapple, corn, millet, sorghum, yams, potatoes, beans and rice. It has been determined that the livestock sector has been developed throughout the country and plays an especially important role in the northern region of the country. It has been proved that the main goal of the country's agricultural development is to ensure food security, whose achievement is strongly influenced by globalization of climate change. For the country under study, the country's orientation towards a "product concept" is characteristic, in which the main objective is to ensure the physical and economic availability of agricultural food. The strategic priorities in the country's agricultural development, which include the mobilization of local resources for intensive production taking into account environmental requirements, are highlighted. It is substantiated that today specialized regions have been formed in relation to the production of certain types of products, which allowed to increase the productivity of agricultural crops. It is noted that there are differences in indicators of productivity of agricultural production in farms and research stations, which proves the existence of unused reserves for improving production efficiency. The characteristic features of development of agricultural production of the country are systematized: low level of technical support; a manifestation of the tendency to increase the land of farms; the prevalence of small commodity producers; low income farmers; predominance of informal economic relations; use of manual labor; complicated access to loan financing sources; low level of involvement of commodity producers in value added chains. It is proved that under conditions of intensification of investment activity in the country's agriculture and realization of the foreseen measures of the strategic national plan, conditions and preconditions for effective development, modernization of production infrastructure, access of farmers to sources of financing and other components of sustainable development will be formed. It is highlighted that one of the conditions for the sustainable development of agriculture in the country is the intensification of agricultural production, which will promote ecological and social sustainability. Important instruments for its achievement are technological innovations in the direction of introducing new or improved agro technology of cultivation and modern management practices, new breeds of farm animals and poultry, integrated practices for improving soil fertility and widespread replacement of manual labor. Innovative solutions need to be coordinated with the specifics of the production process, and in terms of environmental and water and energy intensity. Key words: agriculture, food safety, farmer, innovation, investment attractiveness.

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The use of a hydrological-economic model to assess sustainability in groundwater-dependent agriculture in drylands

Cited by 22 publications

References 11 publications

Unraveling Misunderstandings about Desertification: The Paradoxical Case of the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin in Southeast Spain

Unraveling Misunderstandings about Desertification: The Paradoxical Case of the Tabernas-Sorbas Basin in Southeast Spain

SAT: A Software for Assessing the Risk of Desertification in Spain

Modern Trends in Agricultural Development in Cameroon and Ways to Ensure Its Sustainability

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