Planning a sustainable regional irrigated production and forest protection under land and water stresses with multiple uncertainties

Abstract

Abstract This study developed a hybrid stochastic-fuzzy model with Green-Z scenario (HFSG) for coordinating regional irrigated production and forest protection (IPFP) under stresses of water and land resources with multiple informations. The novelty of proposed HFSG is that the improvement of handling capacity for various uncertainties can facilitate to generate a practical landscape scale planning and water resources management (land-water plan) with a more robust manner. It not only has advantage of reflecting the meteorological impact (e.g., precipitation) presented as probability distribution, but also identifies natural or artificial vagueness in the process of decision-making. Moreover, Green-Z scenario analysis associated with the risk-averse attitude, threshold of acceptability and coefficient of robustness can discern the tradeoff between expected targets and outcomes under different risk preferences of decision makers. Through the application of proposed HFSG model in a practical land-water plan issue, numbers of results associated with optimized planting scales (including cultivation withdraw and forest recovery), stresses of water and land resources, pollutant mitigations, ecological effects and system benefits under varied Green-Z scenarios can be obtained. The results can support policymaker to produce cleaner strategies for alleviating conflict between irrigated activities and environmental protection, achieving socio-economic and eco-environmental sustainability.