Abstract
To address the issues of water shortages and the loss of agricultural products at harvest in northern Afghanistan, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was applied for agricultural water resource management by simulating surface runoff in the Balkhab River basin (BRB) on a monthly basis from 2013 to 2018. Elevation, slope, land cover data, soil maps, and climate data such as temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation were used as inputs in the SWAT modelling. During the dry season from July to September, the water resources downstream were basically attributed to baseflow from groundwater. In the calibration, the groundwater baseflow was estimated by analyzing station-recorded discharges for 190 springs. With the estimated baseflow, the SWAT results were markedly improved, with R2 values of 0.70, 0.86, 0.67, and 0.80, Nash-Sutcliff efficiency (NSE) values of 0.52, 0.83, 0.40, and 0.57, and percent bias (PBIAS) values of 23.4, −8.5, 23.4, and 17.5 in the four different subbasins. In the validation, the statistics also indicated satisfactory results. The output of this study can be used in agricultural water resource management with irrigation practices and further in the assessment of climate change effects on the water resources in the BRB.
Highlights
Water resource management has had an inevitable link to economic development and human activities throughout history
In terms of the statistics for model performance, the model can be evaluated as satisfactory to very good with respect to the R2 values, while the Nash-Sutcliff efficiency (NSE) and PBAIS values were unsatisfactory in subbasins 7, 10, and 28, where high underestimation decreased the NSE range between −0.71 and −0.15 and the PBAIS range between 56.1% and 69.7%
In terms of the statistics for model performance, the model can be evaluated as satisfactory to very good with respect to the R2 values, while the NSE and PBAIS values were unsatisfactory in subbasins 7, 10, and 28, where high underestimation decreased the subbasin 30, the model did not differ with and without groundwater input since the subbasin is located far upstream, where six lakes feed a perennial discharge to the streamflow
Summary
Water resource management has had an inevitable link to economic development and human activities throughout history. Every continent has experienced water scarcity, and global water use has increased two times faster than the population increase in the last century [1]. Especially in arid and semiarid regions, highlights the importance of water resource management worldwide. 80% of the population in Central Asia is experiencing difficulty associated with water stress, and approximately 50% of the population suffers from water shortages [3]. Studies report an increase in drought severity in Afghanistan and its neighboring countries in Central Asia [4,5,6,7]. Water resource management during severe drought, water scarcity, and shortages is essential to reduce the vulnerability of local people
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