Showing 16 results for Water Resources
N Rouhani, H Yang, S Amin Sichani, M Afyuni, S.f Mousavi, A.a Kamgar Haghighi,
Volume 12, Issue 46 (1-2009)
Abstract
Iran, with an average annual precipitation of about 252 mm (413 BCM) and renewable freshwater resources of 130 BCM, has irregular distribution of water resources. With a high population growth rate, agriculture remains the greatest water user in Iran but its production still does not meet the total food demand of the country. Due to unreliable water availability, the competition for water from other sectors and the increasing demand for food and better diets, Iran will experience water stress. In this study, virtual water trade in relation to water resources availability has been assessed as a way of relaxing water stress in Iran. The results showed that from the 21 food products, cereals, pulses, nuts and oilseeds are water-intensive crops according to their estimated virtual water content, while fruits, vegetables and industrial crops are not water-intensive. Considering the volume of virtual water entering the country through food imports, more water will be available for other essential uses. However, the virtual water trade has been developed rather unconsciously regarding water use and crop water productivity during the past two decades. For instance, wheat with a share of 58.5% in the virtual water import to Iran, was the dominant imported crop during 1983-2003. By importing 10.4 Mt of wheat, 11.6 BCM of water has been saved within the country during 1999-2003. However, Iran became self-sufficient in wheat production in early 2005. Consequently, this latest drive for self-sufficiency in the production of wheat, as a water-intensive crop, put tremendous pressure on domestic water resources. The trend in crop trade in terms of quantity and virtual water for other groups of crops has also been shown in the study. Seemingly, crop production and import have been greatly influenced by the weather conditions. With the increasing water scarcity, the role of virtual water in food security is expected to rise continuously in Iran. Thus, conscious virtual water trade as a policy measure in water management and judicious adjustment in agricultural structure will ensure sustainable food security and water availability in Iran.
S. Dodangeh, J. Abedi Koupai, S. A. Gohari,
Volume 16, Issue 59 (4-2012)
Abstract
Due to the important role of climatic parameters such as radiation, temperature, precipitation and evaporation rate in water resources management, this study employed time series modeling to forecast climatic parameters. After normality test of the parameters, nonparametric Mann-Kendall test was used in order to do trend analysis of data at P-value<0.05. Relative humidity and evaporation (with significant trend, -0.348 and -0.42 cm, respectively), as well as air temperature, wind speed, and sunshine were selected for time series modeling. Considering the Autocorrelation function (ACF) and Partial Autocorrelation function (PACF) and trend of data, appropriate models were fitted. The significance of the parameters of the selected models was examined by SE and t statistics, and both stationarity and invertibility conditions of Autoregressive (AR) and Moving average (MA) were also tested. Then, model calibration was carried out using Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Anderson- Darling and Rayan-Joiner. The selected ARIMA models are ARIMA(0,0,11)*(0,0,1), ARIMA(2,0,4)*(1,1,0), ARIMA(4,0,0)*(0,1,1), ARIMA (1,0,1)*(0,1,1), ARIMA (1,0,0)*(0,1,1) for relative humidity, evaporation, air temperature, wind speed and sunshine, respectively. The fitted models were then used to forecast the parameters. Finally, trend analysis of forecasted data was done in order to investigate the climate change. This study emphasizes efficiency of time series modeling in water resources studies in order to forecast climatic parameters.
I. Vayskarami, K. Payamani, A. Shahkarami, A. Sepahvand,
Volume 17, Issue 65 (12-2013)
Abstract
The main aim of flood water spreading in Iran is to recharge groundwater. Understanding the effect and efficiency of such projects is one of the most important activities in managing and implementing water spreading. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of water spreading on groundwater resources in Kohdasht plain. Data and information required including precipitation rate, groundwater level and groundwater exploitation were collected and analyzed for a ten year period. First of all, in order to assess the three variables test of normality was performed and then all the data was normalized. The results showed that before implementing the water spreading project, fluctuations of groundwater were proportional to utilization of groundwater resources, showing a declining rate. After implementing the project, a turning point on groundwater level was observed. Also, another turning point was recognizable in hydrological year 1377-1378. In addition to overexploitation, drought affected the aquifer so dramatically that standard index in hydrological year 1371-1372 decreased from 0.3 to -1.5 in hydrological year 1377-1378.
M. J. Zareian, S. S. Eslamian, H. R. Safavi,
Volume 20, Issue 75 (5-2016)
Abstract
This study investigated the effects of climate change on the evapotranspiration amount and water balance in the Zayandeh-Rud river basin. Two important weather stations; Isfahan and Chelgerd stations, located in the East and West of the basin respectively, were selected for investigation in this study. The combination of 15 GCM models were created based on the weighting method and three patterns of climate change including the ideal, medium and critical were defined. Using the proposed patterns, the effects of climate change on temperature and evapotranspiration in Isfahan station and precipitation in Chelgerd station were estimated under the A2 and B1 emissions scenarios. Two indices were considered to determine the sustainability of agricultural water consumption in the study area. Ratio of evapotranspiration in the East part of the basin to precipitation in the West part was defined as EPR index (Evapotranspiration-Precipitation Ratio), and the ratio of maximum agricultural water deficit to the amount of agriculture water need, was considered as maximum deficit index (MD). Results showed that the annual temperature would increase between 0.63-1.13°C in the eastern part of the basin. The west precipitation in the basin would reduce between 6.5-30% in the ideal to critical patterns. Summer season, showed the most amount of increase in the temperature, and winter season, showed the most amount of decrease in precipitation. The A2 emission scenario showed more temperature increase and more precipitation decrease in comparison with the B1 emission scenario and also indicated that the potential evapotranspiration would increase by 3.1 to 4.8% in the basin. The EPR index will increase between 13-52% and MD index will increase between 9-35% in Zayandeh-Rud river basin under different climate change patterns. The results revealed the imbalance between agricultural water use in eastern part and the precipitation in the western part of the basin. In other words, in these conditions, appropriate management strategies and planning should be implemented to ensure the sustainability of water resources in Zayandeh-Rud River Basin.
S. F. Mousavi, H. R. Vaziri, H. Karami, O. Hadiani,
Volume 22, Issue 1 (6-2018)
Abstract
Exploitation of dam reservoirs is one of the major problems in the management of water resources. In this research, Crow Search Algorithm (CSA) was used for the first time to manage the operation of reservoirs. Also, the results related to the exploitation of the single-reservoir system of Shahid-Rajaei dam, located in Mazandaran province, northern Iran, which meets the downstream water demands, were compared to those obtained by applying the Particle Swarm and Genetic algorithms. Time reliability, volume reliability, vulnerability and reversibility indices, and a multi-criteria decision-making model were used to select the best algorithm. The results showed that the CSA obtained results close to the problem’s absolute optimal response, such that the average responses in the Crow, Particle Swarm and Genetic Algorithms were 99, 75 and 61 percent of the absolute optimal response, respectively. Besides, except for the time reliability index, the CSA had a better performance in the rest of the indices, as compared to Particle Swarm and Genetic Algorithms. The coefficient of variation of the obtained responses by CSA was 14 and 16 times smaller than the Genetic and Particle Swarm Algorithms, respectively. The multi-criteria decision-making model revealed that the CSA was ranked first, as compared to the other two algorithms, in the Shahid-Rajaei Reservoir's operation problem.
M. Barahimi, K. Shahverdi,
Volume 22, Issue 2 (9-2018)
Abstract
Determination of the required water for crop and irrigation programing is of major importance in the sustainable use of water resources. The national water document is the output of the ‘net irrigation required for crops’, which is presented for the optimum allocation of water resources for the demands. The Penman-Monteith-FAO method is used in the calculation. Updating the national water document is necessary to overcome its some limitations, and to provide more adaptation to the plains conditions of the country. The objective of this study was the recognition of the existing problems of the water national document and appropriate method development for implementing in the country plains. In this regard, the required water of different crop patterns was calculated using the Penman-Monteith-FAO method in the Ghazvin plain (as a dry plain), Ghazvin province, and Fomanat plain (as a wet plain), in Fomanat province, in the period of 1976-2005. The results were compared to the water national document. It was shown that annual potential evatranspiration varied between 1330 and 1587.1 mm in the Ghazvin plain, and between 743 and 809 mm in the Fomanat plain. The calculated evapotranspiration in the present study was about 40.6% more than water national document in the Takestan station, in Ghazvin plain, as a sample station.
S. M. Sajjadi, H. R. Safavi, O. B. Haddad,
Volume 22, Issue 3 (11-2018)
Abstract
In this study, the WEAP model was used for the simulation and the Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) was applied as the optimization model. Due to the necessity of multiple simulations in the optimization process to achieve the optimal solution, the linkage of simulation and optimization models was done in the MATLAB software environment. To evaluate the performance, hedging policies achieved in the base period were investigated for the near future period under climate change. The results showed the poor state of aquifers under the baseline scenario; also, the continuation of the current management caused the Zayandehrood river basin to experience significant problems. So management of water resources using conjunctive hedging policies could improve the situation. The use of conjunctive hedging rules showed 11 percent increase in the group sustainability index for demands, in comparison with the baseline scenario. Also, according to the group sustainability index for the resources, applying the conjunctive hedging policies could increase the sustainability of surface water and groundwater resources as much as 5.2 and 6 percent, respectively, relative to the baseline scenario. The results also indicated the better performance of conjunctive hedging policies in comparison to the baseline scenario policies.
S. M. Seyedan, R. Bahramloo,
Volume 22, Issue 4 (3-2019)
Abstract
In recent years, with the excessive use of underground water resources in the Malayer Plain, the water level has dropped sharply and underground water resources, which serve as the main source of water supply for the agricultural sector and drinking, the city is facing a serious risk. Because of the relevance of each of the fields with other agricultural fields around, this study was done to show the potential effect of this problem on the welfare. So, in this study, the special econometric method was employed. The purpose of this study was to analyze the welfare of farmers and how it is affected by the exploitation of underground water resources. For this purpose, by using social welfare function, the effect of change in the value of groundwater level of social welfare producers was addressed. The necessary information was collected from 119 questionnaires carried out in 2015 .Moran's I statistics showed that the results of special regression method were better than those of Ols. The results of this study indicates a decline in the welfare loss of groundwater level and the continuation of the harvest of underground water resources would lead to a reduction in access to water and reduced production. The rate of change in return for the welfare of the reduction of every meter of underground water level to cultivate wheat and potatoes was 6983 and 7634 million Rials, respectively.
M. Aghapour Sabbaghi,
Volume 22, Issue 4 (3-2019)
Abstract
With regard to the crisis of water resources in the country, overdraft of groundwater resources has caused undesirable situation for most of the plains. On the one hand it is necessary for the stability of the resources are constantly using these resources, future generations need to be considered. In this regard, in this study make a cropping pattern with aims to develop a sustainable supply of groundwater resources in the Baghmalek plain has been considered. In this study, time series variables technique are used for predicting future values of variables. Also, the dynamic programming model, is used to determine the cultural pattern. Information needed for this research in two ways questionnaire and the use of statistics resource of agri-jahad and Khuzestan province`s water and power organization in 2013, has been collected. The results show that water input is considering as a limited production factor in the agricultural sector of the region. In addition, using of above pattern, will make fundamental changes in the region`s cropping pattern. The use of modern irrigation methods can increase the agricultural production capacity to double size. The main proposed of study is choosing the patterns that consider intergenerational sustainability about scares inputs such as water.
R. Mir, Gh. R. Azizyan, A. R. Massah Bavani, A. R. Gohari,
Volume 24, Issue 3 (11-2020)
Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the vulnerability of Sistan plain to fluctuations and Water Scarcity in Hirmand River using the vulnerability framework, by applying the resilience approach. The socioeconomic and biophysical components presented in this framework were embedded in a set of subsystems of the System Dynamics (SD) model. According to this, four levels of reference resilience were defined based on the annual flow from the Hirmand River, and the system attributes of concern were identified under the existing structure until 2050. Then, the proposed strategies to the socio-economic structure of the model were applied under two critical conditions of water scarcity and fluctuations of the river flow. The values associated to the system attributes of concern of the two mentioned conditions were compared with the reference resilience levels. The results showed the efficiency of the policy option in reducing water scarcity and the importance of the environmental impacts of the biophysical component. For example, the two modes of water scarcity and water inflow fluctuations had the revenues of 9490 and 5100 billion IRR (annual income according to the base price of 2011), but they had the same population and resident's utility, which was related to receiving 117 and 600 MCM of the environmental demand, respectively. Management, development and continuous support of the industrial sector can provide a "Success to the Successful" archetype for the socio-economic section of Sistan Plain.
E. Mokallaf Sarband, S. Alimohammadi, Sh. Araghinejad, K. Ebrahimi,
Volume 24, Issue 4 (2-2021)
Abstract
In determining the allocation of water resources, the probable conditions of water resources and water demands are considered as the water allocation scenarios in the basin scale. Then, these scenarios are evaluated in the context of integrated water resources management and from the perspective of sustainable development indicators. The best scenario is selected in order to determine the water allocations. In these evaluations, there are spatial distributions and their interactions are simultaneously the key charaterictics in the decision matrix. These features are not often considered in the evaluation process. In the present study, distributed indicators and simple and integrated multi-criteria evaluation models, including ANP and CP methods, were used to evaluate the water allocation scenarios in the Aras Basin. The results showed that modeling of the spatial distribution and interactions of water allocation impacts was not possible through any of the simple multi-criteria evaluation methods. Simplifying and discarding one or two key features in the evaluation process can lead to significant uncertainties on rankings with a Spearman coefficient of -0.1. By implementing the integrated spatial decision-making approach and applying two features simultaneously, the fourth scenario was ranked first. The proposed approach was compared with the individual models, showing more accurate, with the correlation coefficients of 0.5, 0.6 and 0.7.
S. Moghim, J. Rahmani,
Volume 25, Issue 1 (5-2021)
Abstract
Improper water managements and overuse of surface water and groundwater mainly for agricultural purposes in Iran have led to the drying of many rivers and groundwater. Climate change adds an extra pressure on the water resources. These changes indicate the necessity of adjustment in water management plans. This study used hydroclimatic variables including precipitation and temperature in Urmia Plain to find appropriate crops that needed the minimum irrigation water. In addition, the best time for planting each crop is determined. To find the proper crops for the region, the daily water, as required for each crop, was calculated based on climate condition, crop type, and crop growth stage. The results indicates that grape could be the best crop for the region. In addition, early planting (e.g. in spring) reduced the irrigation water needed due to more rain and soil moisture in spring than summer, which could provide crop water requirement. On the other hand, the increased temperature in spring could satisfy heat units required for the fully grown plants like barley.
A. Rezapour, M. Hosseini, A. Izady,
Volume 25, Issue 4 (3-2022)
Abstract
Integrated assessment of the watershed is critical in arid and semi-arid areas due to the severe water stress in these regions. Data and information are an essential part of decision making and water governance to obtain integrated water resources management at the watershed scale. Water accounting is a helpful tool to organize information and present them as the standard indicators to achieve this goal. Therefore, the objective of this study is to implement the Water Accounting Plus framework (WA+) in the Ferizi watershed located in the Khorasan-e Razavi Province. In this study, water accounting indicators of the Ferizi watershed for a period of 28 years (1990-2017) and wet (1990-1997) and dry (1998-2009) periods were calculated using the SWAT model. The calculated indicators showed that the amount of manageable water and usefulness of consumption (transpiration) is low in the watershed and a large part of the share of irrigation in the watershed is provided by groundwater resources. Generally, the results of this study showed that the use of the SWAT model, WA+ framework, and analysis of water accounting indicators play a significant role in assessing the agricultural and hydrological conditions of the watershed. The proposed approach in this study can help managers make enlightened decisions to keep the sustainability of the watershed.
S. Bigdeli, K. Ebrahimi, A. Hoorfar, A.a. Davudirad,
Volume 26, Issue 4 (3-2023)
Abstract
In this study, the accuracy of the Adaptive Network-Based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) in integrating with the Gray Wolf Algorithm (ANFIS-GWO) in predicting groundwater level was evaluated for the first time using unpublished observational data from 1998 to 2018 in the Zarandieh aquifer, central Iran. Three observational wells were randomly selected for analysis. Assessment of evaluation criteria demonstrated that among the proposed scenarios using the hybrid model, the D scenario was selected as the optimal scenario with input data including the previous month's groundwater level, precipitation, temperature, and groundwater extraction. In the D scenario, parameters including MAPE, RMSE, and NASH were 0.29 m, 0.47 m, and 0.99, respectively for the first observational well. Also, C scenario with input data including the previous month's groundwater level, precipitation, and groundwater extraction for the second observational well, for the same parameters mentioned above equal to 0.20 m, 0.26 m, and 0.99. As well for the third observational well, the A scenario with input data including the previous month's groundwater level for the same parameters equal to 0.29 m, 0.41 m, and 0.99 as the optimal scenarios were selected using the ANFIS-GWO model. Based on the results, the Gray wolf algorithm in training the ANFIS model was able to reduce the average forecast error by equal to 0.03 (RMSE) and 0.02 (MAPE) meter and increased the average NASH value equal to 0.01 and increased the accuracy of predictions.
A.r. Emadi, S. Fazeli, M. Hooshmand, S. Zamanzad-Ghavidel, R. Sobhani,
Volume 27, Issue 1 (5-2023)
Abstract
The agricultural sector as one of the most important sectors of water consumption has great importance for the sustainability of the country's water resources systems. The objective of this study was to estimate the river water abstraction (RWA) for agricultural consumption in the study area of Nobaran in the Namak Lake basin. The RWA was estimated using variables related to morphological, hydrological, and land use factors, as well as a combination of their variables collected through field sampling. Data mining methods such as adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS), group method of data handling (GMDH), radial basis function (RBF), and regression trees (Rtree) were also used to estimate the RWA variables. In the current study, the GMDH24 model with a combined scenario including the variables of river width, river depth, minimum flow, maximum flow, average flow, crop, and the garden cultivated area was adopted as the best model to estimate the RWA variable. The RMSE value for the combined scenario of the GMDH24 model was found to be 0.046 for estimating RWA in the Nobaran study area. The results showed that the performance of the GMDH24 model for estimating RWA for maximum values is very acceptable and promising. Therefore, modeling and identifying various variables that affect the optimal RWA rate for agricultural purposes fulfills the objectives of integrated water resources management (IWRM).
A. Shahnazari, S. Sadeghi,
Volume 27, Issue 2 (9-2023)
Abstract
In the present paper, crop pattern criteria have been evaluated relying on sustainable development to increase agricultural water productivity. Seven criteria were selected as the main environmental and economic criteria and were prioritized and reviewed for important and strategic products in the Tajan catchment of Mazandaran province. Criteria prioritization was done using optimization through a genetic algorithm with an objective function based on sustainable development. Then, physical and economic productivity indices were calculated to determine the productivity value. Based on the results, in the selection of the crop pattern, firstly, the category of economic criteria and finally the category of environmental criteria have been given attention to the farmers in the current situation. But in the genetic optimization algorithm, all priorities have a similar order from the environmental point of view and then from the economic point of view although each product has its order of criteria. By this prioritization, the parameters of the cultivated area, the volume of water consumed, and the amount of chemical fertilizers have decreased on average by 26%, 34%, and 21%, respectively, and the parameters of product performance and profitability have increased by 43% and 61%, respectively. In addition to providing environmental standards and increasing sustainable development, this prioritization causes an average increase in physical productivity by 84% and an increase in economic productivity by 72%.
