Policy-Making toward Integrated Water Resources Management of Zarrine River Basin via System Dynamics Approach under Climate Change Impact

Aida Hosseini Baghanam, Arshia Jedary Seifi, Ali Sheikhbabaei, Yousef Hassanzadeh, Mohsen Besharat and Esmaeil Asadi
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Aida Hosseini Baghanam: Department of Water Resources Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz 51666-16471, Iran
Arshia Jedary Seifi: Department of Water Resources Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz 51666-16471, Iran
Ali Sheikhbabaei: Department of Water Resources Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz 51666-16471, Iran
Yousef Hassanzadeh: Department of Water Resources Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz 51666-16471, Iran
Mohsen Besharat: School of Engineering, Arts, Science and Technology, University of Suffolk at Suffolk New College, Ipswich IP4 1QJ, UK
Esmaeil Asadi: Water Resources Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Tabriz, Tabriz 51666-16471, Iran

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-18

Abstract: In terms of having a comprehensive vision toward supplying the water requirements, a multi-criteria decision-making approach was employed on the Zarrine River Basin (ZRB) in the northwest of Iran. First, the climate change impacts were analyzed with the Long Ashton Research Station Weather Generator (LARS-WG) downscaling approach by using General Circulation Models (GCMs) including the European Consortium Earth System Model (EC-EARTH), Hadley Centre Global Environment Model version 2 (HADGEM2), Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate, version 5 (MIROC5), and Max Planck Institute Earth System Model (MPI-ESM), from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP4.5, RCP8.5) scenarios for 2021–2080. Afterward, the downscaled variables were utilized as inputs to the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model to predict future runoff under the climate change impact. Finally, the system dynamics (SD) model was employed to simulate various scenarios for assessing water balance utilizing the Vensim software. The results of downscaling models suggested that the temperature of the basin will increase by 0.47 and 0.91 °C under RCPs4.5 and 8.5 by 2040, respectively. Additionally, the precipitation will decrease by 3.5 percent under RCP4.5 and 14 percent under RCP8.5, respectively. Moreover, simulation results revealed that the water demand in various sectors will be enormously increased. The contribution of the climate change impact on the future run-off was a seven percent decrease, on average, over the basin. The SD model, according to presented plausible scenarios including decreasing agriculture product and shifting irrigation efficiency, cloud-seeding, population control, and household consumption reduction, reducing meat and animal-husbandry production, and groundwater consumption control, resulted in a water balance equilibrium over five years. However, the performance of individual scenarios was not effective; instead, a combination of several scenarios led to effective performance in managing reduced runoff under climate change.

Keywords: climate change; system dynamics; water resources management; Zarrine River Basin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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