Improving Environmental Water Supply in Wetlands through Optimal Cropping Patterns

Mahdi Sedighkia () and Bithin Datta
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Mahdi Sedighkia: ICEDS & MSI, Australian National University, Canberra 2601, Australia
Bithin Datta: College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville 4814, Australia

Agriculture, 2023, vol. 13, issue 10, 1-17

Abstract: This study improves the environmental water supply in a wetland using a novel framework in which the environmental impacts due to irrigation supply and the economic losses for agriculture are minimized through the proposal of an optimal cropping pattern that changes the total cropping area and cultivated area of each crop. The ecological degradation functions for rivers and wetlands were developed using a fuzzy approach and data-driven model. The net farming revenue was considered as the economic index to maximize benefits. The root mean square error (RMSE) and the Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient (NSE) were applied to evaluate ecological models. According to the results, the optimal cropping pattern simultaneously minimizes environmental impacts due to irrigation supply and maximizes farmers’ benefits. The optimal cropping pattern provides more than 50% of the ideal net revenue on the catchment scale, which means that ecological degradations due to reductions in inflow in rivers and wetlands, as well as farmers’ revenue losses, are minimized simultaneously. Furthermore, the results indicate that cropping patterns should be dynamic, which means that changing the cropping pattern annually based on the available water is essential to mitigating ecological impacts. This study demonstrates that the linking of cropping pattern optimization and environmental flow simulation in freshwater bodies should be considered in land-use policies due to the impact of cropping patterns on environmental degradation in wetland catchments.

Keywords: wetland ecosystems; economic losses; optimal agricultural land use; physical habitat simulation; data-driven model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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