Datensatz

Zusammenfassung

Agricultural water management (AWM) interventions are critical to adapt to climate change. However, the interaction of AWM interventions with hydrological and social systems can cause negative, often unintended and unexpected, externalities leading to long term unsustainable and inequitable outcomes. In this paper, an agent based sociohydrology model is developed to explicitly model human–water system interactions of AWM interventions to understand their (un)sustainable and (in)equitable outcomes. The developed ABM integrates a spatially explicit hydrological model to simulate the human-water feedback of interventions with an agent decision-making module. Farmer's (agents) decisions on irrigation and investment decisions are simulated using RANAS behavioral theory. The model is applied to the case study area of Saurashtra region in the Gujarat state of India where intensive development of rainwater harvesting structures, such as check dams (CDs), has taken place. The ABM simulates ~ 50000 farmers in the area, characterized by their socioeconomic and behavioral characteristics based on secondary census data and primary surveys. Results show that ABM can satisfactorily simulate the hydrological impact of CDs. The results elucidate the supply-demand dynamics, where the increased perception of supply (from CDs) has led to more demand, as has been observed in the catchment. Additionally, the results show that the benefits of CDs are unequally distributed, and investments are not sustainable due to a lack of maintenance. The results show that developed ABM is capable of assessing the spatiotemporal and inequitable human-water feedback of interventions in agricultural systems and can be used as a planning tool for future investments.