Sustainable agricultural water management incorporating inexact programming and salinization-related grey water footprint

Abstract

In arid and semi-arid regions, improper irrigation activities not only exacerbate water shortages, but also lead to environmental pollution such as soil salinization that hinders crop growth and agricultural sustainability. There has been a lack of agricultural water management tools that could support agricultural water management with salinization-related grey water footprints being considered and associated uncertainties being addressed. In this study, salinization-related grey water footprints were measured through accounting for relationships among irrigation, soil salinity, evapotranspiration and crop yield, and then incorporated into an agricultural water management model for supporting environmentally sound irrigation decisions. Such an agricultural water management model was also characterized by a newly proposed generalized fuzzy interval fractional programming (GFIFP) method that could address ratio problems of two objectives and dual uncertainties. The developed methodology coupling the GFIFP method and grey water footprints was applied to an irrigation region in northwestern China where water scarcity and soil salinization hindered local development. Five credibility levels corresponding to decision makers' varied satisfactory degrees over water availability, and nine weight coefficients of possibility and necessity measures were considered. Results showed that, in order to reduce negative environmental impacts while increasing economic benefits, more irrigation water should be allocated to wheat and sunflower rather than corn. When the credibility level is 0.5 and weight coefficient is 0.9, the system efficiency would be the highest. Compared to the benchmark year of 2018, this scenario would generate [0.330, 6.647] billion yuan more benefits and [16.0, 133.9] million m3 less grey water footprints. Compared to three conventional approaches, GFIFP could provide decisions with more flexibility and less environmental impacts. The developed approach could also be applied to agricultural water management problems in other areas aiming at reducing grey water footprints and enhancing environmental benefits under uncertainty.