Increasing Agricultural Resilience through Combined Supply and Demand Management (Case Study: Karaj Reservoir Dam, Iran)

Abstract

Among the solutions to climate change’s harmful effects, AS (Adaptation Strategies) are more feasible. In this study, four AS, Changing Cultivation Dates (CCD), Deficit Irrigation (DI), Improving Irrigation Performance (IIP), and Optimizing the Crop Pattern (OCP), were investigated. The results showed that the WUE (Water Use Efficiency) was declined when the cultivation date was changed for all crops in the baseline and increased after the cultivation date was brought forward to 7, 14, 14, 28, 28 days for tomato, wheat, corn, barley and cucumber, respectively, in the future period. Deficit irrigation of 30% increased the WUE in all crops. A 48% increase in irrigation performance reduced demand by 10%. Following the OCP and diminishing the cultivation area by 30% increased farmers’ total profit and reduced the water consumption volume by 9% and 11%, respectively, in the baseline and future periods. To study the effect of these AS on crop yield and allocated volume, a combination of crop model programming and the MOEPO (Multi-Objective Emperor Penguin Optimizer) was employed to minimize Vulnerability and maximize Reliability Indexes (Performance Indexes). In the supply section, three scenarios were examined. The results showed that DI, IIP, CCD and OCP were classified from the most to the least option based on improving the Performance Indexes.

Keywords

• deficit irrigation
• irrigation performance
• cultivation date
• crop pattern
• adaptation strategies
• agricultural resilience