Evaluating water resources management scenarios considering the hierarchical structure of decision-makers and ecosystem services-based criteria

Abstract

This paper introduces a new methodology for evaluating water resources management scenarios considering different aspects of their hydrological ecosystem services. The temporal variations of supplied water to different demands are assessed as provisioning hydrological ecosystem services. Then, three agricultural drought management policies have been defined for each water supply-demand alternative to reduce the irrigation water and cultivated area of the agricultural demand nodes during droughts. In addition to the net primary productivity criterion (NPP) and economic profit, the ecological condition of the system has been evaluated as an ecosystem services-based criterion. To prioritize and select the best water resources management (WRM) scenario(s), a game theory-based hierarchical evidential reasoning (ER) technique with multiple decision-makers has been used. The proposed methodology has been applied to the Urmia Lake basin, which is the largest saline lake in the Middle East. The grade-based values of the criteria have been used to compare the WRM scenarios. The results show that a scenario that includes supplying 100% of the lake's water demand has the highest priority. This scenario also suggests reducing the cultivated area of dominant crops and using deficit irrigation practices.