The debate over the effectiveness of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in practice has lasted for years. As the complexity and scope of IWRM increases in practice, it is difficult for hydrological models to directly simulate the interactions among water, ecosystem and humans. This study presents the large-scale hydrological modeling (MIKE HYDRO) approach and a Decision Support System (DSS) for decision-making with stakeholders on the sustainable water and land management along the Tarim River.
With the mainstream of 1321 km, the Tarim River is the longest inland river in China. On the northern edge of the Taklimakan desert, the Tarim River Basin is an extremely arid region. Overexploitation and other anthropogenic activities has caused severe environmental problems in the basin. Since 2011, the German Ministry of Science and Education BMBF established the Sino-German SuMaRiO project, for the sustainable management of river oases along the Tarim River. A cross-disciplinary consortium of 11 German and 9 Chinese universities and research institutes joint together for the research on SuMaRiO, focusing on realizable management strategies, considering social, economic and ecological criteria. This will have positive effects for nearly 10 million inhabitants of different ethnic groups in the basin.
A lumped and a distributed MIKE HYDRO model were established separately in the Tarim River Basin. The lumped model focus on evapotranspiration, soil available water, water-saving scenarios and crop type changes. In the distributed model, a land use map was combined with water distribution methods to solve the water allocation problems. The calibration and validation were successful. The comprehensive management of farmland areas and water distribution strategies were investigated in model scenarios. The optimized water allocation strategies help alleviate conflicts among farmers under water scarcity.
DSS is the main outcome of SuMaRiO. The development of the DSS provides links from the outputs of hydrological models with real-time decision making on social-economic assessments and land use changes. The overall goal of the DSS is to integrate all crucial research results of SuMaRiO, also including stakeholder perspectives, into a model based decision support system, to understand ecosystem services (ESS) and integrating them into land and water management in the Tarim River Basin.
The DSS is user-friendly for supporting decision-making progress to the stakeholders and decision-makers. The involvement of stakeholders bridges the gap between hydrological models and engineering practice. Communications with the local residents provide opportunities to gather research data and knowledge, as well as implement research outcomes. Therefore, getting the stakeholders involved in the research process is very crucial to the project. Moreover, local stakeholders and residents will benefit in the long term from sustainable management practices. The implementation of the DSS provides stakeholders scientific guidance on their management practices. In the meantime, the feedbacks from the users help improve the DSS and gain experience in the future cooperation researches.
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The debate over the effectiveness of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in practice has lasted for years. As the complexity and scope of IWRM increases in practice, it is difficult for hydrological models to directly simulate the interactions among water, ecosystem and humans. This study presents the large-scale hydrological modeling (MIKE HYDRO) approach and a Decision Support System (DSS) for decision-making with stakeholders on the sustainable water and land management along the Tar...
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