Human impacts on terrestrial hydrology
Climate change versus pumping and irrigation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15548602 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ian M Ferguson, R M Maxwell (0000-0002-1364-4441, Colorado School of Mines, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 044022-044022 |
| Publication date | 2012-10-31 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Research Letters (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326 |
| Publisher | IOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044022 |
| OpenAlex | W2160590129 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 31 |
Global climate change is altering terrestrial water and energy budgets, with subsequent impacts on surface and groundwater resources; recent studies have shown that local water management practices such as groundwater pumping and irrigation similarly alter terrestrial water and energy budgets over many agricultural regions, with potential feedbacks on weather and climate. Here we use a fully-integrated hydrologic model to directly compare effects of climate change and water management on terrestrial water and energy budgets of a representative agricultural watershed in the semi-arid Southern Great Plains, USA. At local scales, we find that the impacts of pumping and irrigation on latent heat flux, potential recharge and water table depth are similar in magnitude to the impacts of changing temperature and precipitation; however, the spatial distributions of climate and management impacts are substantially different. At the basin scale, the impacts on stream discharge and groundwater storage are remarkably similar. Notably, for the watershed and scenarios studied here, the changes in groundwater storage and stream discharge in response to a 2.5 °C temperature increase are nearly equivalent to those from groundwater-fed irrigation. Our results imply that many semi-arid basins worldwide that practice groundwater pumping and irrigation may already be experiencing similar impacts on surface water and groundwater resources to a warming climate. These results demonstrate that accurate assessment of climate change impacts and development of effective adaptation and mitigation strategies must account for local water management practices
Aquifer · Arid · Climate change · Drainage basin · Geography · Groundwater · Groundwater recharge · Hydrology (agriculture · Precipitation · Soil and Water Assessment Tool · Streamflow · Surface water · Water resource management · Water resources · Water table · Watershed · Climate variability and models · Environmental Science · Geophysics and Gravity Measurements · Hydrology and Watershed Management Studies · Ecology · Environmental Engineering · Geology
Groundwater flow across spatial scales
Impact of groundwater extraction on subsurface thermal regimes
Projected response of global runoff to El Niño-Southern oscillation
Cooling effect of agricultural irrigation over Xinjiang, Northwest China from 1959 to 2006
Groundwater-fed irrigation impacts spatially distributed temporal scaling behavior of the natural system
The spatiotemporal trajectory of US agricultural irrigation withdrawal during 1981–2015
Assessing regional groundwater stress for nations using multiple data sources with the groundwater footprint
The Changing Character of Precipitation
Land–atmosphere coupling and climate change in Europe
Groundwater depletion and sustainability of irrigation in the US High Plains and Central Valley
Satellite-based estimates of groundwater depletion in India
Hydrologic and land–energy feedbacks of agricultural water management practices
| Citations per year | 0.54 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2025 (13) |
| Highly cited | No |