Downside risk of aquifer depletion

Groundwater aquifers support agricultural production in many parts of the world. Rapidly declining aquifer levels can have significant negative implications for the sustainability of irrigated agriculture. In this paper, we study the effects of declining well capacities on the downside risk of irrig...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIrrigation science Vol. 38; no. 5-6; pp. 577 - 591
Main Authors Rouhi Rad, Mani, Araya, A., Zambreski, Zachary T.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.11.2020
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Agricultural production
Agriculture
Aquatic Pollution
Aquifers
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Cereal crops
Climate Change
Climatic conditions
Crop yield
Crops
Depletion
Environment
Grain
Groundwater
Groundwater depletion
Heterogeneity
High plains
Life Sciences
Original Paper
Profit
Profits
Risk
Soil
Soil types
Soils
Sorghum
Sustainability
Sustainable Development
Waste Water Technology
Water Industry/Water Technologies
Water Management
Water Pollution Control
Climate change
Production risk
Downside risk
Aquifer depletion
Ogallala
High Plains Aquifer
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Summary:Groundwater aquifers support agricultural production in many parts of the world. Rapidly declining aquifer levels can have significant negative implications for the sustainability of irrigated agriculture. In this paper, we study the effects of declining well capacities on the downside risk of irrigated agricultural production, defined as the standard deviation of profits that are below the average profit. We simulate seasonal crop yield and profits for three different crops, namely, maize, wheat, and grain sorghum and five different soil types for Finney County in Kansas which overlies the high plains aquifer under current climatic conditions and under the projected climate change scenario with RCP4.5. We find that lower well capacities not only result in lower average profits for all three crops, but they also result in an increase in downside risk. However, we also find that there is significant heterogeneity in downside risk across different crops and soil types. Our results highlight the importance of downside risk for the sustainability of irrigated production under declining aquifer levels and climate change.
ISSN:0342-7188
1432-1319
DOI:10.1007/s00271-020-00688-x