Feedbacks between managed irrigation and water availability: Diagnosing temporal and spatial patterns using an integrated hydrologic model

Groundwater-fed irrigation has been shown to deplete groundwater storage, decrease surface water runoff, and increase evapotranspiration. Here we simulate soil moisture-dependent groundwater-fed irrigation with an integrated hydrologic model. This allows for direct consideration of feedbacks between irrigation demand and groundwater depth. Special attention is paid to system dynamics in order to characterized spatial variability in irrigation demand and response to increased irrigation stress. A total of 80 years of simulation are completed for the Little Washita Basin in Southwestern Oklahoma, USA spanning a range of agricultural development scenarios and management practices. Results show regionally aggregated irrigation impacts consistent with other studies. However, here a spectral analysis reveals that groundwater-fed irrigation also amplifies the annual streamflow cycle while dampening longer-term cyclical behavior with increased irrigation during climatological dry periods. Feedbacks between the managed and natural system are clearly observed with respect to both irrigation demand and utilization when water table depths are within a critical range. Although the model domain is heterogeneous with respect to both surface and subsurface parameters, relationships between irrigation demand, water table depth, and irrigation utilization are consistent across space and between scenarios. Still, significant local heterogeneities are observed both with respect to transient behavior and response to stress. Spatial analysis of transient behavior shows that farms with groundwater depths within a critical depth range are most sensitive to management changes. Differences in behavior highlight the importance of groundwater's role in system dynamics in addition to water availability.

[1]  R. Mahmood,et al.  Anthropogenic land-use change in the North American tall grass-short grass transition and modification of near-surface hydrologic cycle , 2002 .

[2]  Reed M. Maxwell,et al.  Human impacts on terrestrial hydrology: climate change versus pumping and irrigation , 2012 .

[3]  G. Katul,et al.  Soil moisture and vegetation controls on evapotranspiration in a heterogeneous Mediterranean ecosystem on Sardinia, Italy , 2006 .

[4]  Elfatih A. B. Eltahir,et al.  Representation of Water Table Dynamics in a Land Surface Scheme. Part I: Model Development , 2005 .

[5]  Douglas A. Miller,et al.  A Conterminous United States Multilayer Soil Characteristics Dataset for Regional Climate and Hydrology Modeling , 1998 .

[6]  James S. Famiglietti,et al.  Irrigation in California's Central Valley strengthens the southwestern U.S. water cycle , 2013 .

[7]  Jozsef Szilagyi,et al.  Net Recharge vs. Depth to Groundwater Relationship in the Platte River Valley of Nebraska, United States , 2013, Ground water.

[8]  J. Kirchner,et al.  Fractal stream chemistry and its implications for contaminant transport in catchments , 2000, Nature.

[9]  Yoram Rubin,et al.  Observations and stochastic modeling of soil moisture control on evapotranspiration in a Californian oak savanna , 2008 .

[10]  P. de Rosnay,et al.  Integrated parameterization of irrigation in the land surface model ORCHIDEE. Validation over Indian Peninsula , 2003 .

[11]  T. Oki,et al.  Design of Total Runoff Integrating Pathways (TRIP)—A Global River Channel Network , 1998 .

[12]  J. D. Tarpley,et al.  The multi‐institution North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS): Utilizing multiple GCIP products and partners in a continental distributed hydrological modeling system , 2004 .

[13]  T. Gleeson,et al.  Regional strategies for the accelerating global problem of groundwater depletion , 2012 .

[14]  D. Lawrence,et al.  Regions of Strong Coupling Between Soil Moisture and Precipitation , 2004, Science.

[15]  Reed M. Maxwell,et al.  Role of groundwater in watershed response and land surface feedbacks under climate change , 2010 .

[16]  Xi Chen,et al.  Groundwater influences on soil moisture and surface evaporation , 2004 .

[17]  Alan K. Betts,et al.  Understanding Hydrometeorology Using Global Models , 2004 .

[18]  R. Reedy,et al.  Groundwater depletion and sustainability of irrigation in the US High Plains and Central Valley , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[19]  Jens Hartmann,et al.  Mapping permeability over the surface of the Earth , 2011 .

[20]  J. Józsa,et al.  MODIS‐Aided Statewide Net Groundwater‐Recharge Estimation in Nebraska , 2013, Ground water.

[21]  Francina Dominguez,et al.  Evidence of Enhanced Precipitation Due to Irrigation over the Great Plains of the United States , 2010 .

[22]  Song-You Hong,et al.  Role of sea surface temperature and soil-moisture feedback in the 1998 Oklahoma–Texas drought , 2000, Nature.

[23]  Dara Entekhabi,et al.  Hillslope and Climatic Controls on Hydrologic Fluxes , 1995 .

[24]  R. Maxwell,et al.  The groundwater land-surface atmosphere connection: Soil moisture effects on the atmospheric boundary layer in fully-coupled simulations , 2007 .

[25]  J. Lenters,et al.  Quantifying the impact of groundwater depth on evapotranspiration in a semi-arid grassland region , 2009 .

[26]  J. D. Tarpley,et al.  Real‐time and retrospective forcing in the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) project , 2003 .

[27]  Eloise Kendy,et al.  Groundwater depletion: A global problem , 2005 .

[28]  Ying Fan,et al.  Incorporating water table dynamics in climate modeling: 1. Water table observations and equilibrium water table simulations , 2007 .

[29]  S. Ashby,et al.  A parallel multigrid preconditioned conjugate gradient algorithm for groundwater flow simulations , 1996 .

[30]  R. Maxwell,et al.  Capturing the influence of groundwater dynamics on land surface processes using an integrated, distributed watershed model , 2008 .

[31]  R. Koster,et al.  Observational evidence that soil moisture variations affect precipitation , 2003 .

[32]  D. Toll,et al.  Simulating the Effects of Irrigation over the United States in a Land Surface Model Based on Satellite-Derived Agricultural Data , 2010 .

[33]  David B. Lobell,et al.  Regional Differences in the Influence of Irrigation on Climate , 2009 .

[34]  Elfatih A. B. Eltahir,et al.  A Soil Moisture–Rainfall Feedback Mechanism: 1. Theory and observations , 1998 .

[35]  Reed M. Maxwell,et al.  Development of a Coupled Land Surface and Groundwater Model , 2005 .

[36]  S. Kanae,et al.  The Influence of Precipitation Variability and Partial Irrigation within Grid Cells on a Hydrological Simulation , 2007 .

[37]  R. Maxwell.  A terrain-following grid transform and preconditioner for parallel, large-scale, integrated hydrologic modeling , 2013 .

[38]  N. Diffenbaugh,et al.  Fine-scale processes regulate the response of extreme events to global climate change. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[39]  J. Huntington,et al.  Role of surface‐water and groundwater interactions on projected summertime streamflow in snow dominated regions: An integrated modeling approach , 2012 .

[40]  Randal D. Koster,et al.  The Sensitivity of Surface Fluxes to Soil Water Content in Three Land Surface Schemes , 2000 .

[41]  Laura E. Condon,et al.  Implementation of a linear optimization water allocation algorithm into a fully integrated physical hydrology model , 2013 .

[42]  Reed M. Maxwell,et al.  The impact of subsurface conceptualization on land energy fluxes , 2013 .

[43]  Jim E. Jones,et al.  Approved for Public Release; Further Dissemination Unlimited Newton-krylov-multigrid Solvers for Large-scale, Highly Heterogeneous, Variably Saturated Flow Problems , 2022 .

[44]  R. Dickinson,et al.  The Common Land Model , 2003 .

[45]  A. Robock,et al.  Incorporating water table dynamics in climate modeling: 3. Simulated groundwater influence on coupled land‐atmosphere variability , 2008 .

[46]  Fotini Katopodes Chow,et al.  Coupling groundwater and land surface processes: Idealized simulations to identify effects of terrain and subsurface heterogeneity on land surface energy fluxes , 2010 .

[47]  Dennis P. Lettenmaier,et al.  Effects of irrigation on the water and energy balances of the Colorado and Mekong river basins , 2006 .

[48]  Mark W. Rosegrant,et al.  Global Water Demand and Supply Projections , 2002 .

[49]  Reed M. Maxwell,et al.  Hydrologic and land–energy feedbacks of agricultural water management practices , 2011 .