Multi-scale modeling for water resources planning and management in rural basins

Abstract: This study aims at adopting modeling tools focusing multi-scale problem solving in basins with irrigation water uses. Multi-scaling may help conflict solving since an approach to the scale close to that where conflicts occur is more appropriate for understanding and dealing with related problems. It mainly applies to rural basins where competition among agricultural and non-agricultural uses is high during periods when water availability is scarce. The approach refers to the field scale modeling relative to agricultural demand considering soils, crops and crop patterns, cropping techniques, environment factors, irrigation practices and restrictions to water use (ISAREG model), and basin scale water resource planning models including non-agricultural uses—urban, domestic, industrial, recreational and other uses (SAGBAH model). Analyses of scenarios require then a multi-scale approach. It results a tool that produces a distributed spatial analysis of the agricultural demand, while non-agricultural uses refer to sub-basins. Simplicity in model operation is aimed. The model operates interactively, sharing results from the sub-models, in order to obtain the information required to define strategies for crop irrigation management and to assess impacts on the non-agricultural users, and to generate rules for water allocation in the basin. The multi-scale analyses allows to improve knowledge on the processes relative to water use, to understand spatial and temporal variations, to simulate with historical data and for different scenarios, including those that may result from climate change. Furthermore, the software system works in a semi-automatic way allowing the user to interact along all computations steps, particularly relative to the interaction among scales. Selected results are included in this paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]