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Abstract (from ScienceDirect): Study region Middle Section of the Rio Grande Basin (MRG), U.S. Study focus Long-term tradeoffs of technologically possible land and water management interventions were analyzed to adapt irrigated agriculture to growing water scarcity in a desert environment under a projected warm-dry future. Nineteen different intervention scenarios were investigated to evaluate potential watershed-scale agricultural water savings and associated water budget impacts in the MRG. The interventions are based on (i) management innovations of growers in implementing deficit irrigation and changing cropping patterns using existing crops, (ii) changing cropping patterns by introducing new alternative drought-...
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The Middle Rio Grande Hydroeconomic Optimization Model, also referenced as "The Bucket Model”, is a simple coarse-scale basin model that simulates all major water sources, sinks, uses, and losses. It also includes economic values of water, as well as institutional constraints governing water supply and use for the Middle Rio Grande between the inflow to Elephant Butte Reservoir and Fort Quitman on the Rio Grande. This model is designed to be a useful tool for improving our understanding of the hydrology, agronomy, institutions, and economics to guide analysis of policy and management questions that are important to stakeholders. The current version of the model is an aggregate “three bucket” model that reflects...
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We review over twenty years of publications on Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) applications in arid/semi-arid irrigated agricultural watersheds. Our review reveals strict dominance of the model's use for better understanding water quantity aspects of water management. While this is to be expected given the reality of water scarcity and associated challenges for agricultural production systems in arid/semi-arid regions, the capabilities of SWAT to model water quality have been underutilized. The main modeling challenges are lack of observational data, poor data quality, concerns about simulation accuracy, and technical limitations of the model despite numerous advancements in the last two decades. To deal with...
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