Tools and Solutions for Watershed Management and Planning Under Climate Change

Abstract

Water resources in watersheds are severely affected by climate change, water scarcity, and frequent droughts. This leads to a conflict between different users of water, especially between agriculture and the environment sectors. Due to the multidimensional and multiscale nature of watershed management and climate change, it is necessary to provide some tools and solutions for sustainable management and planning of watersheds under climate change. In this regard, the purpose of this study was to develop a conceptual framework in the field of tools and solutions for integrated watershed management and planning to optimally allocate water resources between different sections in the watersheds. In order to achieve this goal, the literature on the watershed management was reviewed, and it was found that there are three categories of studies in this field. The first category includes studies that have managed the watershed using hydrological and economic simulation tools. The second category is studies that consider environmental aspects as well and combine hydrological, economic, and environmental simulation tools. The third category is studies that consider users’ behavior very important in watershed management and employ some behavior-specific tools to simulate the behavioral complexities of users. The results showed that the combination of all hydrological, socioeconomic, environmental, and behavioral components and the use of component-specific tools to simulate these components can achieve sustainable watershed management. Furthermore, the present integrated framework can be used in various case studies around the world due to its comprehensiveness and operationality for integrated watershed management.