Orals: Wed, 6 May, 14:00–17:55 | Room 3.29/30
Increases in the frequency and intensity of droughts, heatwaves, and their compound occurrence are placing growing pressure on both clean water provision and water-dependent energy systems, and their interactions worldwide. While many studies quantify the impact of climate extremes on clean water supply and energy systems, far less attention has been given to how countries are managing risks across these sectors.
This study provides a global assessment of management strategies for clean water and energy provision under droughts, heatwaves, and compound events, and assesses their implications for water–energy trade-offs. We especially focus on management strategies related to energy-intensive water supply options, including desalination, wastewater treatment, and inter-basin transfers, and water-intensive energy technologies such as hydropower and thermoelectric power.
We combined a structured literature review (focusing on the period 2000–2025) with an indicator-based global data analysis. Using semi-automated screening and manual review, we evaluate water–energy sector interactions and management strategies during droughts, heatwaves, and compound events. In addition, we complement this review with new national-scale indicators capturing water scarcity (water gap per capita), dependence on water-intensive electricity generation, thermoelectric cooling technologies, and reliance on energy-intensive water sources. This allows us to assess both “water-for-energy” and “energy-for-water” risks and to consistently compare reported strategies with underlying system vulnerabilities across countries globally.
The results show that energy-intensive water supply options such as desalination and wastewater treatment are widely promoted to reduce water scarcity, with growing emphasis in future adaptation pathways. However, even in several countries with large treatment capacity, these technologies address only a small share of total water gaps. On the energy side, adaptation strategies focus mainly on switches in cooling-system types, optimization in reservoir operation, and energy-mix diversification (e.g., shifting to technologies which do not require water such as wind and solar energy) to adapt to climate change and extremes (i.e., droughts, heatwaves).
Our study highlights several opportunities for more coherent clean water–energy management. In the water sector, treated wastewater can support energy provision by supplying cooling water for thermoelectric power plants and by enabling energy recovery through processes such as biogas or heat extraction. In the energy sector, locating water-intensive power generation in water-abundant regions for climate-smart energy planning in the future, and expanding water-independent renewable energy, emerge as key options to reduce pressure on scarce resources. The presented results provide a basis for future scenario design and modelling and offer a foundation for stakeholder engagement to assess joint clean water–energy transition pathways that align with regional socio-environmental conditions.
How to cite: Bakhshianlamouki, E., Gold, D. F., Magni, M., Jones, E. R., Shah, J., Haasnoot, M., and van Vliet1, M. T. H.: Global assessment of management strategies for clean water and energy provision under droughts, heatwaves, and compound events, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-3950, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-3950, 2026.
The dual challenge of meeting rising global food demand while accelerating the clean energy transition requires innovative land-use strategies. Agrivoltaics—the co-location of solar photovoltaics and agriculture—offers a transformative solution, yet global adoption has been hindered by a lack of standardized sunlight requirements for crops. Here, we introduce a framework to quantify crop-specific light requirements using the Daily Light Integral (DLI). We define two distinct thresholds: a “theoretical” DLI and a “real-world” DLI. Applying these thresholds to the world’s four staple crops (wheat, maize, rice, and soybean), we assess the global potential for co-generation without compromising food security. Our analysis reveals that even under conservative design scenarios SC40 that prioritize food security, agrivoltaic systems could generate over 100,000 TWh of electricity annually. Soybean and wheat demonstrate the highest compatibility, particularly in the Middle East, South Asia, and the Americas. These findings outline a quantitative pathway for sustainable land-use transitions, showing that multifunctional landscapes can simultaneously mitigate climate change, reduce water use, and strengthen rural resilience. Agrivoltaics exemplifies the water–energy–food–environment nexus at scale by improving land-use efficiency, creating favorable microclimates, and reducing evaporative demand.
How to cite: Karimzadeh, S., Bou-Zeid, E., Camporese, M., Daccache, A., Hernandez, R. R., Katul, G., Ahamed, M. S., Kummu, M., and Abou Najm, M.: Global Potential of Agrivoltaics for Sustainable Food and Energy Transitions, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6997, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6997, 2026.
River systems sustain societies, economies, and ecosystems, yet their management is increasingly constrained by competing demands for energy production, food security, and environmental protection. The Mekong River basin exemplifies these tensions. Rapid hydropower expansion - over 160 dams have been built in recent decades, and hundreds more are planned - has profoundly altered one of the world’s most biodiverse and productive river systems, raising concerns over their cumulative impacts on sediment transport, aquatic ecosystems, greenhouse gas emissions, and regional livelihoods. Despite exstensive research on hydropower sustainability, basin-scale assessments that explicitly capture multi-sector interactions and transboundary trade-offs remain limited.
Here, we introduce an integrated modeling framework to evaluate the multisectoral consequences of alternative hydropower development portfolios across the entire Mekong Basin. The framework couples the large-scale hydrological model VIC-Res with a suite of sectoral impact models, enabling the joint assessment of five key dimensions: hydropower generation, reservoir greenhouse gas emissions, sediment connectivity, ecosystem alteration, and freshwater fishery productivity. This integrated setup allows the quantification of trade-offs and synergies both across sectors and national boundaries, providing a comprehensive basis for evaluating the sustainability and equity of hydropower development.
We apply the framework to a set of dam portfolios representing contrasting development pathways, spatial configurations, and management objectives. For each portfolio, we analyze how benefits and costs of hydropower development are distributed among Mekong countries and sectors, considering both basin-wide outcomes (e.g., the total energy production, sediment fluxes, and ecosystem health) and national-level indicators. By explicitly linking hydrological, ecological, and socio-economic processes, the framework captures feedbacks and dependencies that are typically overlooked in single-sector assessments.
Our results provide a powerful lens for exploring the boundaries of sustainable hydropower development. By jointly representing water, energy, ecosystem, and socio-economic interactions, the framework enables identification of development pathways that maintain the integrity of critical ecological functions and productive processes while meeting energy objectives. The analysis reveals how development choices can move the basin toward - or away from - sustainable and equitable operating trajectories. Ultimately, this work offers a transferable methodological foundation to support integrated, cooperative planning in the Mekong and other transboundary river basins worldwide.
How to cite: Castelletti, A., Invernizzi, B., Giuliani, M., and Calisi, C.: Understanding multisector and transboundary trade-offs of hydropower expansion in the Mekong River basin, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-9502, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-9502, 2026.
CLEWs-EU, an open-source Integrated Assessment Model developed to analyse the coupled climate–land–energy–water (CLEWs) system of the European Union within a single, internally consistent optimisation framework, is presented here. Implemented in OSeMOSYS, the model identifies least-cost system configurations that satisfy exogenously defined energy service demands across electricity and heat supply, buildings, industry, and transport, while simultaneously accounting for land availability, crop production, livestock, forest dynamics, water withdrawals, and climate-sensitive resource constraints. The energy system representation includes primary energy supply, renewable and thermal generation, electricity storage, hydrogen production, and cross-border electricity exchange, with intra-annual time slices capturing seasonal and daily variability in demand and renewable output. The land and water components represent crop types by irrigation class, biomass production, water supply and withdrawals by sector, and land allocation among cropland, pasture, forest, and other uses. Explicit linkages connect irrigation demand, hydropower availability, thermal cooling requirements, and biomass flows into the energy system, enabling assessment of system-wide trade-offs and feedbacks. Baseline projections to mid-century indicate a strong shift toward electrification across end-use sectors, driven primarily by the expansion of renewable electricity generation and the increasing deployment of heat pumps in buildings. Electricity generation is increasingly dominated by wind and solar, supported by storage and intercountry balancing through expanded interconnections. Final energy demand in buildings declines due to efficiency improvements and renovation measures, while transport activity shifts toward electric and, in specific modes, hydrogen-based technologies. Hydrogen supply grows over time, with both domestic production and imports contributing to end-use consumption, particularly in transport and industry.
Land-use dynamics reflect increasing competition between food production, biomass supply for energy, and forest-based carbon sequestration. Crop production evolves through shifts in land allocation and irrigation practices, while water withdrawal patterns change substantially across sectors and countries, with agriculture remaining the dominant user in water-stressed regions. Water constraints influence both agricultural output and energy pathways, including hydropower generation and thermal plant cooling. Emissions trajectories vary markedly by sector, with faster declines in power generation and slower reductions in agriculture and certain industrial processes, highlighting persistent mitigation challenges beyond the electricity system.
How to cite: Sridharan, V., Taliotis, C., Martindale, L., Karamaneas, A., Nikolakakis, T., Kokoni, S., Koasidis, K., Nikas, A., Karmellos, M., Gkiouleka, I., Kousoulos, E., Konstantinou, I., Zachariadis, T., and Johnson, N.: Mapping Europe’s Net-Zero Trade-offs: An Open Integrated Model of Energy, Land, and Water Systems, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-7281, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-7281, 2026.
Africa’s progress towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is at risk. Although global trade serves as a critical link between Africa and the global market, its impact on Africa’s progress towards the SDGs is still a matter of discussion. Thus, elucidating the mechanisms through which trade influences SDGs is essential for advancing global sustainable development. In this study, we utilized a Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) model to develop the counterfactual scenario of “no-trade” aimed at measuring the net effects of global trade on Africa’s SDG 2.4, SDG 6.4, and SDG 13.2, which are interconnected within the water-food-climate system. Our results revealed that global trade reduced Africa’s average SDG score by 1.83, thereby exacerbating the disparities of sustainable development between Africa and the rest of the world. Although imports of water infrastructure and technology boosted performance on SDG 6.4 (+2.97), this progress was outweighed by declines in SDG 2.4 (-3.43) and SDG 13.2 (-5.04). We further observed significant variability across Africa that the adverse impact was most severe in low-income countries (-2.48), compared with lower-middle-income (-1.07) and upper-middle-income (1.77) countries. The environmental burden imposed by trade partners also differed markedly. High-income countries exerted the strongest negative effect, primarily by externalizing environmental costs through agricultural imports and embodied carbon transfers, whereas Asian economies present a trade-off between technological assistance for water conservation and the extraction of resources. Our research showed that Africa is increasingly compromising its ecological integrity in exchange for immediate revenue from resource exports. Consequently, it is urgently to implement green premium mechanisms and strategic conservation policies to decouple economic globalization from local environmental degradation. This study highlighted the environmental obligations that Africa holds within the global trade framework and clarified its driving mechanisms.
How to cite: Shu, J. and Peng, J.: Widening of Africa’s SDG gap induced by global trade, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6231, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6231, 2026.
Enhancing groundwater access in service of agricultural productivity and food security is a critical aspect of integrating sustainable energy solutions into agricultural practices. This is particularly important in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where agricultural productivity has stagnated among smallholder farmers. Current literature is dominated by techno-economic analyses based on large-scale modeling which incorporate accurate biophysical data but lack socioeconomic realities that shape economics of groundwater access. Relatively fewer studies estimate impacts of irrigation expansion based on household surveys and agricultural interventions. The latter while providing a clearer picture of on-ground realities, often lack the scale required to incorporate biophysical data. We build upon both areas by merging biophysical and socioeconomic data to examine the drivers of irrigation technology adoption and simulate energy requirements through an agent-based model. Merging household level survey data from the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) with spatial groundwater characteristics across five SSA countries reveals farm size constraints as a potential economic challenge for future farmer-led irrigation adoption. We find that while plentiful groundwater is available, the distribution of hydrogeologies imply high-energy demand across large parts of Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. With adequate energy infrastructure, currently cultivated area can largely be irrigated even during the dry season for several crops across key food groups including fruits and vegetables, pulses, roots, and grains. To our knowledge, this is the first cross-country integration of LSMS adoption patterns with spatial groundwater constraints to map feasibility for and consequences of irrigation expansion in the region. By linking adoption patterns to groundwater constraints, we identify regions where irrigation expansion is likely, where energy requirements are a likely constraint, and which crop categories are favourable for dry season cultivation. Our findings enable policy planning that prioritises crops which maximize nutritional returns from groundwater based irrigation expansion and identify least-cost pathways for providing the energy access required. Finally, they also provide a basis for managing uncertainty and risk in current and future groundwater stocks across SSA.
How to cite: Rameez, N. A., Ray, S., and Falchetta, G.: Mapping Groundwater Irrigation Potential and Energy Requirements for Food Security Across Sub-Saharan Africa, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-16112, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-16112, 2026.
Water and energy are two essential and interdependent resources that form the foundation of modern civilization. In Germany, the energy sector accounts for the largest share of total water demand (39% in 2022). Bavaria has traditionally been considered a water-rich federal state, with total water withdrawals historically remaining below 10% of available water resources. However, these conditions may change in the future, as climate change alters hydrological regimes and increases the frequency and severity of drought events. In this context, it is necessary to assess the resilience of regional water and energy systems under future climatic, demographic, and structural changes in the energy sector.
This study investigates the water–energy nexus and water security in the Upper Main River basin (Bavaria, Germany). The analysis is conducted within the framework of the RETOUCH Nexus project using an integrated modeling approach that combines the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT+), the Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP), and the Low Emission Analysis Platform (LEAP). SWAT+ is applied to simulate future hydrological changes under different climate scenarios derived from the ISIMIP3b dataset, while WEAP is used to represent sectoral water demands. Energy system transitions aligned with Bavaria’s 2040 climate neutrality targets are represented through LEAP, capturing feedbacks between electricity generation, renewable energy expansion, and water use in the energy sector.
The results indicate that the Upper Main River basin experiences seasonal unmet water demand, especially during summer months, with water availability declining under climate change. The SSP5–8.5 scenario represents the worst-case combination of reduced water availability and increased demand. Future unmet water demand emerges primarily in the industrial and energy sectors. However, the transition toward renewable energy—particularly wind and solar power—offers substantial potential to reduce water consumption in electricity generation, thereby increasing the resilience of the energy sector to climate change. Overall, this study provides a robust basis for forward-looking, climate-resilient water management and policymaking within Bavaria’s evolving environmental and energy system.
How to cite: Huang, J., Prakash, S., Ayyappan Preetha Kumari, S., and Digiusto, M.: Climate-Driven Water Stress and the Role of the Energy Transition in Enhancing Water–Energy Nexus Resilience, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20870, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20870, 2026.
Transboundary aquifers underlie a large share of global irrigation and urban water supply, yet their shared nature and associated governance challenges raise concerns about accelerated depletion. Here I provide the first global assessment of groundwater depletion in transboundary aquifers. Using long-term groundwater-level trends from more than 100,000 observation wells, I show that transboundary aquifers deplete significantly faster on average than matched domestic aquifers, and that depletion is systematically concentrated near international borders. Extending this analysis to the global population of transboundary aquifers using high-resolution data on irrigated cropland, I find that irrigation is likewise disproportionately concentrated near borders. However, these spatial patterns are largely explained by hydrogeography (the co-location of rivers, alluvial plains, and irrigation infrastructure) rather than by border-related competitive overuse. This suggests that transboundary groundwater stress is often driven by physical setting rather than strategic behavior, on average, a finding that is both informative and encouraging for the prospects of cooperative governance.
How to cite: Muller, M. F.: Enhanced groundwater depletion near borders in transboundary aquifers, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4985, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4985, 2026.
Food, energy, and water (FEW) form the foundation of human livelihoods and support a wide range of socio-economic activities. These resources are interconnected across regions and sectors through complex supply chains linking upstream production and downstream consumption. In the context of increasing population pressure, resource constraints, and environmental challenges, examining FEW interactions from a supply-chain perspective is essential for understanding regional sustainability and livelihood well-being. This study constructs a multi-regional and multi-sector FEW flow network for China using provincial input–output data to capture cross-regional FEW linkages embedded in economic activities. Critical supply chains and key nodes within the FEW system are identified, and their performance is evaluated by jointly considering economic benefits, resource consumption, and associated environmental impacts. This integrated assessment helps reveal inefficiencies related to resource waste and excessive environmental pressures. In addition, regional livelihood well-being associated with the FEW nexus is evaluated from three dimensions: availability, accessibility, and stability. Based on these analyses, the study further investigates how individual FEW subsystems and their interactions influence regional livelihood well-being through supply-chain connections. The results show that agriculture, the food processing industry, and the construction sector play central roles in China’s FEW system. However, several important supply chains and regions exhibit relatively low performance due to inefficient resource use or high environmental burdens. Moreover, in many regions, FEW-related livelihood well-being does not correspond to their level of economic development or their position within supply chains, indicating notable spatial disparities. These findings suggest that improving livelihood well-being and regional sustainability requires coordinated management of FEW systems across regions. Strengthening interregional economic and trade cooperation, together with providing appropriate ecological compensation to regions that supply large amounts of FEW resources, can help reduce environmental pressures and promote more balanced development outcomes.
How to cite: Mai, Q.: Coupling characteristics of China's food-energy-water nexus and its implications for regional livelihood well-being, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-3658, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-3658, 2026.
This study utilizes a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, specifically GTAP-AW, to analyze the economic implications of alternative water sectors in addressing natural water scarcity, with a focus on the Mediterranean region. Recognizing the growing water scarcity worsened by climate change, the research incorporates alternative water sources—desalination and treated wastewater—into the economic framework, establishing a direct link with natural water as a primary factor of production. The study offers a thorough evaluation of how shifts in the availability and management of water resources, both natural and alternative, as well as climate-driven changes in land and water productivity, can influence vital sectors and the overall economy, especially under climate-driven water shortages.
The research hypothesizes that, despite higher financial and energy costs, the adoption of alternative water sources in water-scarce areas provides significant social benefits by reducing the impacts of natural water shortages, supporting food security, and sustaining economic growth. Results indicate that under the SSP2–RCP4.5 scenario, decreases in natural water availability and declining irrigation water productivity place strong pressure on agriculture, energy production, and GDP. Nevertheless, when desalination and treated wastewater can substitute for scarce natural water—as in the GTAP-AWH specification—these negative effects are substantially mitigated. The findings emphasize the economic value of alternative water sources and advocate for including detailed technical substitution and innovation capabilities into CGE models to better evaluate the economy-wide potential to substitute capital and other inputs with water.
The abstract is sub,itted for the session HS5.3.1: Water resources policy and management - balancing the water, food, energy and environment nexus for sustainable and resilient water systems under global change
How to cite: Palatnik, R., Friedman, D., Sirota, J., Raviv, O., Parrado, R., Shechter, M., Kahil, T., and Bosello, F.: Beyond the Tap: The Value of Alternative Water Sources for Climate Adaptation, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-22039, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-22039, 2026.
Hydropower is a reliable renewable energy source that plays a central role in the water–energy nexus and in integrating emerging energy loads and generation technologies. Hydropower plants (HPs) are designed to operate efficiently within defined ranges of reservoir releases and water levels. Deviations from these conditions, driven by changes in water availability, regulatory constraints, and evolving energy grid demands, reduce operational efficiency. As a result, less energy may be produced per unit of water in a future where hydrology and water operations are meaningfully different from what the HPs were designed for.
However, current state of the art large-scale, long-term energy planning models assume constant, near-optimal turbine efficiency or even constant hydraulic head, ignoring variability in HP efficiency and losses. These simplifications lead to systematic overestimation in our future projections of hydropower generation and capacity. They can also lead to underestimation of future resource adequacy needs, and consequent underinvestment in complementary energy infrastructure, increasing risks to future grid reliability. Models and approaches that provide more accurate, temporally and regionally resolved assessments of hydropower potential are therefore needed to support informed planning decisions.
Here we introduce HEADFIT (Hydraulic-Energy Analysis and Dynamic Fitting), a physics-informed framework for analyzing and calibrating hydropower system performance in long-term water–energy planning models. HEADFIT integrates plant hydraulics, including frictional and minor head losses, tailwater dynamics, and operational limits, with turbine efficiency curves for a high-fidelity estimation of how hydropower generation is expected to change in a changing climate. These relationships are approximated at the plant level using physics-informed relationships calibrated with observed hydrological and operational data. The calibrated plant-level models are then used to project hydropower generation under future hydrological scenarios. Lastly, we employ a Western United States power system model to propagate refined hydropower projections into more accurate grid performance assessments across time scales.
Preliminary analysis for 15 major hydropower plants across the Colorado and Columbia River basins shows that constant-efficiency assumptions overestimate annual hydropower production by an average of five percent, with larger biases during periods of high releases combined with low reservoir levels. These discrepancies reduce the accuracy of capacity and flexibility estimates that support essential grid services. They can also misguide investment and design decisions, increasing risks to grid reliability as climate and demand variability intensify.
How to cite: Yildiz, V., Akdemir, E., Karadi, S., Kern, J., Voisin, N., and Zaniolo, M.: Capturing Dynamic Hydropower Performance in Long-Term Energy Planning, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-13802, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-13802, 2026.
Waterborne and water-related diseases are strongly shaped by ecohydrological and human factors that control the spatial connectivity of freshwater systems. Hydropower dams profoundly modify this connectivity, altering flow regimes, fragmenting aquatic habitats, and reshaping interactions among hosts and pathogens. Yet, the implications of dam-induced connectivity changes for disease transmission remain largely overlooked in assessments of hydropower sustainability.
Here, we investigate how hydropower infrastructure affects the transmission dynamics of Opisthorchis viverrini, a parasitic liver fluke endemic to Southeast Asia. The parasite’s complex life cycle involves freshwater snails and cyprinid migratory fish as intermediate hosts, and piscivorous mammals, including humans, as definitive hosts. Because all hosts depend on aquatic habitats and disperse through river networks, alterations of hydrological connectivity can fundamentally reshape transmission pathways.
We extended a spatially explicit metacommunity model of O. viverrini transmission to include the effects of dams on fish movement and snail habitat availability within a realistic river network. Dams reduce fish migration and fragment river corridors, limiting parasite dispersal, while reservoirs create favorable conditions for snail proliferation that may enhance local transmission. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we vary both the location of the initial infection and the fish passability of existing dams to explore the trade-offs between restoring river connectivity for ecosystem conservation and limiting disease spread.
Our results show that the spatial configuration of dams strongly governs these dynamics. Reservoirs shape transmission pathways, creating zones where infections may either amplify or remain contained. Explicit representation of reservoirs allows identification of critical network nodes, where localized infection could trigger widespread propagation, providing a quantitative basis to prioritizing targeted monitoring, prevention, or intervention campaigns. Importantly, our analysis highlights a key trade-off: increasing dam passability to enhance river connectivity—for example, through fish ladders—supports natural capital and biodiversity but can also weaken hydrological barriers that otherwise limit pathogen spread.
These findings illustrate how hydropower management decisions can simultaneously affect ecological integrity and human health. Incorporating disease ecology into river management and infrastructure planning is therefore essential to fully assess the trade-offs between energy production, ecosystem integrity, and human health in regulated water systems.
How to cite: Invernizzi, B., Rinaldo, A., and Castelletti, A.: Hydropower dams as modifiers of Opisthorchiasis spread in river networks, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-9444, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-9444, 2026.
The increasing frequency and severity of droughts in southern Europe are placing growing pressures on interconnected water-energy-food-environment systems. In Alpine regions, climate change is intensifying hydrological variability through declining snowpack and glacier storage and by altering runoff seasonality, thereby widening the temporal mismatch between water availability and multisectoral demands. In this context, the expansion of existing water storage capacity is emerging as a potential adaptation strategy to buffer hydrological variability and mitigate drought impacts.
This study assesses the synergies and trade-offs of expanding water storage in the Italian Alps through dam heightening. We first apply a multi-criteria evaluation framework to screen and prioritize alternative dam heightening projects. The multisector impacts of the selected alternatives are subsequently evaluated using a distributed hydrological model that explicitly integrates reservoir operations and water transfers related to hydropower operations. Our results demonstrate that dam heightening can substantially improve drought resilience in the region by reducing the gap between water availability and demand under current and projected climate conditions. Overall, this work provides a transferable and policy-relevant framework to support climate-resilient water infrastructure planning in Alpine systems under increasing drought risk.
How to cite: Giuliani, M., Merlo, M., Boes, R. M., Di Marco, F., Avesani, D., Majone, B., and Castelletti, A.: Dam Heightening as a Climate Adaptation Strategy in the Italian Alps, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14973, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14973, 2026.
Water yield is a key ecosystem service that reflects the capacity of watersheds to regulate water availability under varying climatic and land use conditions. In this study, the InVEST Annual Water Yield model was applied to an upstream sub-basin of the Sefidrood watershed located in Kurdistan Province, western Iran, to assess the spatial variability of water yield and its relationship with land use patterns. Watershed boundaries were delineated using a digital elevation model and stream network data in ArcGIS. Potential evapotranspiration was estimated using the Blaney–Criddle method based on available climatological data, while precipitation surfaces were generated from regional rain gauge stations. Land use/land cover for 2023 was derived from Sentinel-2 imagery (10 m resolution) and Esri datasets. Plant available water content was calculated using global soil texture information. Model parameterization included the development of a biophysical table and the calibration of the Z parameter to reflect regional climatic conditions. Results indicate that annual water yield across the watershed ranges from 0 to 239.97 mm, with rangelands contributing the highest total water yield (90,656.7 m³) and orchards exhibiting the lowest contribution (47.2 m³). These findings highlight the strong influence of land use on water yield dynamics and provide a scientific basis for sustainable watershed management and ecosystem service optimization in semi-arid regions of western Iran.
How to cite: khodamoradi, H. and maerker, M.: Assessment of Water Yield as an Ecosystem Service Using the InVEST Model: A Case Study of a Watershed in Western Iran, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-21500, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-21500, 2026.
Achieving sustainable and resilient water management requires a systems perspective that recognises the strong interconnections between water, energy, food, and the environment. The Water–Energy–Food (WEF) nexus framework helps assess trade-offs among these sectors and ways to improve resource use, efficiency, and equity. However, the existing WEF nexus models typically analyse individual components and estimate the required demand of the main element without considering the interconnected aspects among the resources. Besides, there is a lack of open-source analytical tools for multi-scale WEF nexus studies. In this study, we have developed a Web-based WEF Nexus Model (WbWEFNM) integrating the Modified Pardee-RAND WEF Security Index with a dedicated policy analysis module. The model is coded in Java and features an integrated Graphical User Interface (GUI) and database structure, enabling users to construct new regional datasets, compute water, energy, and food subindices, and evaluate an overall WEF nexus index. Outputs are presented in both tabular and spatial formats, facilitating comparative analyses and visual interpretation of resource security patterns. The developed model will help understand the nexus among water, energy, and food by calculating their respective subindices and the WEF nexus index. The model also includes a policy analysis module to help develop or test policies for better resource security. We applied the developed model to the Kangsabati River basin in eastern India, using 2011 data (the most recent official census in India). The computed subindices for water (0.87), energy (0.74), and food (0.78) produced a WEF nexus index of 0.80, indicating moderate resource security. Therefore, various WEF-related policies must be implemented in the basin to achieve comprehensive resource security. The policy analysis module suggested that policies such as the adoption of rooftop water harvesting structures and solar systems, interventions to enhance crop production, and expansion of poultry farms could significantly enhance the WEF security in the basin. The WbWEFNM provides a transparent framework to evaluate resource interactions, trade-offs, and policy impacts. By linking quantitative assessment with scenario-based policy testing, the tool aids evidence-driven planning for sustainable development. The framework directly supports Sustainable Development Goals 2 (Zero Hunger), 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), and 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), and contributes to balancing the WEF-environment nexus for resilient water systems under global change.
How to cite: Singh, R., Mondal, K., and Chatterjee, C.: A Web-Based Modelling Framework for the Water-Energy-Food Nexus with Integrated Policy Analysis, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-86, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-86, 2026.
Contemporary agricultural resilience measurement relies predominantly on backward-looking outcome metrics that obscure how present infrastructure choices configure future adaptation options. This temporal blindspot proves particularly problematic for climate adaptation finance, where quantifying long-term benefits remains challenging compared to straightforward mitigation metrics. We address this methodological gap through the first implementation of pathway diversity theory in agricultural agent-based modeling, demonstrating its application to water infrastructure inequality analysis in Egypt's Fayoum irrigation system. Pathway diversity theory enables explicit analysis of intervention effects across three critical layers: (1) what development programs nominally provide (infrastructure access, subsidies, technical assistance), (2) what farmers actually perceive as available to them given binding constraints, and (3) what farmers ultimately choose from their constrained option sets. Traditional resilience metrics capture only layer three (revealed choices), missing systematic inequalities in layers one and two that determine who has access to adaptive pathways before shocks reveal their necessity. Our ABM simulates heterogeneous farmer agents, operationalizing pathway diversity through archetype-based enumeration of viable livelihood strategies. Each farmer's pathway set emerges from combinations across water sources, crop portfolios, and infrastructure investments, constrained by wealth, farm size, and canal position. Farmers employ satisficing decision-making with bounded rationality, while pathway diversity operates as an analytical lens measuring resilience external to farmer cognition, capturing what farmers could access, not just what they choose. Model results reveal that farm size creates stratification in pathway diversity, far exceeding spatial effects from canal position. The pathway diversity framework’s novelty manifests by: (i) advancing understanding of infrastructure-mediated feedbacks linking water access to adaptive capacity distributions, (ii) introducing novel computational methods for evaluating ex-ante (before-shock) resilience inequalities rather than ex-post (after-shock) outcome disparities, (iii) providing policy evaluation tools that make equity-efficiency tensions explicit rather than implicit, and (iv) enabling identification of intervention targeting criteria that prioritize farmers facing most constrained option sets rather than merely lowest current outcomes. This work demonstrates that rigorous equity-focused development policy requires forward-looking measurement of option inequality, not merely backward-looking assessment of outcome inequality, water infrastructure functions as resilience infrastructure by shaping who can adapt.
How to cite: Badawy, A.: Resilience for Whom? Agent-Based Modeling of Water Infrastructure Access and Agricultural Adaptation Inequalities in Egypt's Fayoum Irrigation System, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15647, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15647, 2026.
Water security is increasingly recognized as a central challenge for sustainable development under global change, requiring policy frameworks that balance domestic needs, livelihoods, environmental sustainability, and climate risk. However, existing approaches to measuring water security face a fundamental trade-off. Resource-based metrics have progressed with the access to satellite data to capture hydrological availability and variability at sub-basin or watershed, but still require extensive data and modeling. In parallel, experiential household-level metrics, such as the Household Water Insecurity Experiences Scale (HWISE) conveys local perceived realities which are shaping welfare and behaviors, yet remain largely confined to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), and other domestic uses, overlooking productive uses, governance, and climate-related risks. This limits their relevance for integrated water resources management and supporting the water–food–energy–ecosystem nexus policies.
This paper presents a new, parsimonious household-level water security module designed to address this gap. Grounded in a widely used conceptual definition of water security encompassing health, livelihoods, ecosystems, and risk, the module captures households’ lived experiences of water insecurity across four domains: (i) domestic water uses, (ii) productive uses supporting agriculture and non-farm activities, (iii) governance and social relations related to water access, and (iv) perceived exposure to climate-related water risks. The short version of the module consists of 13 binary questions and is explicitly designed for integration into large-scale Living Standards Measurement Surveys (LSMS), analogous to experiential food security measurement.
The module was implemented in multiple household surveys in Ghana (2023–2025), with over 2,700 observations from varied livelihood systems: small-reservoir communities, cocoa-growing areas, and mixed rural economies. In addition, a dedicated 2025 survey, about 1,000 households completed both this module and HWISE, enabling direct empirical comparison.
Preliminary findings indicate around half of surveyed households experience water insecurity in at least one domain. An aggregate water security index based on the module demonstrates strong correlations with food security, health outcomes, asset ownership, and household income, emphasizing water access’s centrality to welfare amid climate variability. Disaggregated analysis shows that domestic and productive water insecurity are linked to different socioeconomic outcomes, highlighting the limitations of solely domestic-focused metrics.
The proposed water security index correlates strongly with HWISE, with the strongest alignment in domestic water insecurity (r=0.65) and weaker but still significant correlations for productive (r=0.55) and combined dimensions (r=0.53), indicating substantial convergent validity while capturing additional, non-domestic aspects of water. Moreover, intra-household comparisons suggest broadly similar reported water security experiences among men and women, while pointing to potentially distinct livelihood and wellbeing pathways.
Overall, the proposed module offers a scalable and policy-relevant approach to measuring household water security, bridging experiential metrics and nexus-oriented analysis. By expanding measurement beyond domestic uses to include livelihoods, governance, and climate risk, it offers a more comprehensive understanding of household-level water insecurity and its management. Its strong empirical association with welfare outcomes, combined with its ease of integration into existing surveys, makes it a promising tool for informing integrated water, food, energy, and climate policy under conditions of increasing variability and scarcity.
How to cite: Zane, G., Buisson, M.-C., and Salmawobil, J.: Measuring Household Water Security for Health and Livelihoods: A Scalable Experiential Metric for Nexus-Oriented Water Policy, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17697, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17697, 2026.
Many areas in Sub-Saharan Africa face substantial food security concerns amidst uncertain future crop yield variability. Unexploited rechargeable groundwater resources could be used to stabilize and increase agricultural production through irrigation. To assess economic and environmental viability and impacts, we build a hydro-economic modeling framework to explore sustainable irrigation expansion fed by groundwater. The modeling framework simulates farmer profits under various upscaling and climate scenarios. We apply a nexus approach by incorporating groundwater dynamics and recharge, energy requirements for pumping, endogenous technology choice, and food production. This framework captures trade-offs and feedbacks among water extraction, energy consumption, and agricultural output under future climate conditions. The combination of biophysical models for yields and groundwater, as well as economic modeling for farmer revenues and costs, provides detailed insights into the impacts of multiple irrigation upscaling options. Because irrigation technologies are capital-intensive, they often need economic incentives. We therefore assess the impacts and returns of multiple subsidies and other policies that reduce farmers’ private costs for pumps and irrigation infrastructure. The modeling results show how farmers’ economic profit maximization under future conditions affects crop choices, caloric content of food production, irrigation water use, groundwater dynamics, and agricultural labor. Preliminary results from an application of the framework to three potential upscaling areas in West African Niger indicate substantial potential for sustainable expansion of groundwater irrigation. Multiple policy options support the uptake of groundwater pumping by bridging the high initial investment costs for farmers while delivering an overall positive return on investment, increased revenues from crop production that exceed government expenditure, and enhanced food system resilience.
How to cite: Joseph, J., Zane, G., Quarmine, W., Dembélé, M., and Kahil, T.: Economics of groundwater sustainability: Modeling Incentives for Groundwater-Fed Irrigation in West Africa, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6505, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6505, 2026.
Global water systems are increasingly exposed to intensified water scarcity, climate variability, and competing sectoral pressures. These challenges affect not only the availability and quality of freshwater resources but also the sustainability of ecosystems and the resilience of socio-economic systems. Ensuring sustainability requires innovative and integrated governance approaches that foster climate adaptation and move beyond traditional sectoral thinking. This study addresses the gap by developing an integrated hydro-economic model (HEM) that promotes equitable and inclusive cross-sectoral performance. The model links biophysical, hydrologic, economic, and ecological components within a WEFE Nexus framework. It incorporates CMIP6 climate projections, hydrological outputs from TETIS, crop water requirements from AQUACROP, agricultural and energy price projections from CAPRI and PRIMES, and habitat suitability modelling for key fish species. The HEM assesses how uniform and dynamic water pricing strategies influence water allocation, cross-sectoral outcomes, and species resilience in the Júcar River Basin under future climate and socio-economic conditions. A marginal resource opportunity cost approach (MROC) is applied to construct a stepwise pricing curve for the dynamic water pricing strategy. The results indicate that both water pricing strategies reduce unsustainable water use while preserving economic benefits, improving system efficiency, and alleviating water scarcity. Uniform water pricing considerably reduces water withdrawals by 30%, reaching 759 Mm³ under SSP5-8.5 for the simulation period 2015-2050, compared to the baseline (1078 Mm³), by creating a strong incentive for conservation. However, this approach often does so at the expense of economic efficiency. Its rigid structure disproportionately affects activities with lower economic returns and penalizes crops with lower water productivity, such as cereals, potatoes, or sunflowers. In contrast, dynamic water pricing results in a more moderate reduction in withdrawals, while preserving economic performance by adjusting prices to reflect scarcity conditions. Herbaceous production declines from 562 MT in the baseline to 406 MT under SSP5-8.5, while fruit tree and citrus yields remain mostly stable. Dynamic pricing, therefore, supports better cross-sectoral balance, achieving environmental and energy gains with less economic disruption. Findings also indicate that both pricing strategies enhance ecological resilience by reducing the frequency, duration, and severity of habitat stress below ecological thresholds. The analysis demonstrates that water tariffs could optimize cross-sectoral trade-offs, providing operational evidence to support sustainable, inclusive, and nexus-aligned water governance.
Acknowledgements: This study has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the RETOUCH NEXUS project (grant agreement No 101086522).
How to cite: Baccour, S., Macian-Sorribes, H., Rubio-Martin, A., and Pulido-Velazquez, M.: Water pricing responses to climate-driven scarcity in an integrated hydro-economic nexus framework, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-5169, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-5169, 2026.
Posters on site: Thu, 7 May, 08:30–10:15 | Hall A
Water security is an increasing challenge globally, especially in regions with resource scarcity and complex management needs. Reservoirs play a critical role in mitigating water crises, but their operation is influenced by climate change and human pressure. Understanding changes in water security indicators (WSI) in basins with reservoirs is crucial for sustainable water management, particularly in semiarid regions. Climate projections from CMIP6 using SSP-RCP scenarios are integrated with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and random forest machine learning techniques to simulate future conditions (2011-2100). This combined approach enables capturing both spatial and temporal variations in water security, identifying critical hotspots and vulnerabilities with enhanced predictive accuracy and robust handling of complex, nonlinear hydrological patterns. These insights inform sustainable water strategies tailored to regional challenges. Building on these outcomes, this study develops an integrated modeling framework to assess climate change impacts on the water-energy-food-ecosystem (WEFE) nexus in multipurpose reservoirs by applying hydrological risk transfer models (HRTM). The framework synthesizes reservoir operation simulations with WSIs and the Brazilian water agency (ANA) framework to analyze multi-sector interactions and risks. It aims to optimize reservoir water releases to meet competing demands while minimizing the risk of water shortages and associated economic impacts, simultaneously maximizing multi-sector water sustainability. A novel aspect is the incorporation of AI techniques into HRTM to dynamically adjust hydrological risk transfer mechanisms, such as reservoir index insurance. These insurance contracts, indexed to measurable reservoir inflows, provide financial protection against droughts and floods, redistributing risks spatially and temporally among water users. The framework accounts for seasonality, compound risks, and regional reservoir interactions, enabling comprehensive risk and resilience assessment. Preliminary analyses identify vulnerability hotspots and economic impacts of climate-driven hydrological changes, supporting adaptive reservoir management and insurance design to enhance sustainability and equity in the WEFE nexus. The integrated socio-hydrological, economic, and climate scenario approach advances reservoir management under climate uncertainty, balancing ecological protection with socio-economic objectives for sustainable water security in Brazil’s semiarid regions.
Keywords: water security, climate change impact, reservoir management, water-energy-food-ecosystem nexus, hydrological risk transfer.
How to cite: da Silva, P. G. C., Benso, M., Marinho, G., Krol, M., and Mendiondo, E.: Integrated assessment of climate change impacts on the water-energy-food-ecosystem nexus in multipurpose reservoirs in Brazil, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-1125, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-1125, 2026.
Rice, a principal global staple crop, is increasingly threatened by intensified flooding under climate change, placing rice-dependent economies at risk. Yet the potential for human activities to mitigate inundation impacts on rice remains essential and largely overlooked. Here we develop an interdisciplinary agro-hydrological framework that links climate forcing, hydrological regulation, and farmer decision-making from a systems perspective. We apply the framework to the rapidly changing Lancang-Mekong River Basin, focusing on Tonle Sap Lake – a biodiversity hotspot and major floodplain rice-production region-where shifting flood dynamics interact with rainfall-driven planting practices. We project that farmers' rainfall-driven planting decisions will progeressively delay planting, particularly as climate change intensifies, while the hydrological regime will produce more consistently high but less damaging water levels. Relative to a baseline period (1980-2014) with mean annual rice losses of US$78 million, losses are projected to inthe near future (2021-2060), and then increase in the far future (2061-2100). A Joint adaptation strategy combining reservoir operation (dam regulation) with farmer-led shifts towards earlier planting substantially reduces inundation damages and improves climate resilience. We further find that the dominant phenological window of inundation-induced loss shifts from the reproductive and maturity stages (baseline) to the vegetative and reproductive stages in both the near and far future. Reservoir operation primarily constrains losses during the reproductive and maturity stages, thereby limiting late-season damage. This framework enables investigation of coupled water-agriculture dynamics and their growing interdependencies under climate change, supporting robust assessment of climate-resilient adaptation pathways.
How to cite: Zhang, K., Morovati, K., Urfels, A., and Tian, F.: Dam Regulation Moderates Climate-Induced Rice Yield Loss in the Mekong-Tonle Sap Lake System, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2776, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2776, 2026.
Effective management of transboundary river basins demands a comprehensive understanding of Water–Energy–Food (WEF) system trade-offs, particularly under growing climate and socio-economic development. In the Lancang-Mekong River Basin, rapid expansion of hydropower infrastructure and irrigated agriculture intensifies competition for limited water resources, with climate variability further complicating system dynamics. However, existing WEF models often overlook the spatial heterogeneity of irrigation demand, limiting their ability to capture water reallocations across interconnected systems. Here, we develop a distributed hydrological model that integrates reservoir operations, irrigation withdrawals, and future climate projections to quantify dynamic WEF feedbacks. A key innovation is the inclusion of a hydraulic infrastructure topology module that uses intelligent remote sensing canal detection technique to detect irrigation canals and establish river–reservoir–field connectivity. Historical simulations reveal that prioritizing hydropower generation can reduce downstream irrigation water availability by up to 14%, with dry-season impacts up to five times greater than those in the wet season. Under future scenarios (2021~2040), irrigation demand is projected to increase by 63~68%, largely driven by expansion of irrigated areas. However, projected increases in dry-season precipitation under future climate change could mitigate these trade-offs, reducing average irrigation shortfalls to 7%. Our findings highlight how WEF system interdependencies are dynamically reshaped by climate and infrastructure development, offering a new framework for evaluating adaptive resource management in transboundary river systems.
How to cite: Zhao, H.: Climate Change, Dams, and Irrigation Expansion Reshape the Water–Energy–Food Nexus in the Lancang–Mekong River Basin, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2873, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2873, 2026.
Hydrological modelling is increasingly adopting hyper-resolution approaches in an attempt to provide more accurate and high-resolution representations of local hydrological dynamics. For arid regions and areas expected to be disproportionately affected by a changing climate this may prove particularly useful to make highly localised water allocation decisions. However, the benefits of increasing spatial resolution remain uncertain, as hydrological models are highly sensitive to meteorological forcing data, which constitute one of the main sources of model uncertainty.
A fundamental question is whether finer resolution forcing data meaningfully improve model performance and reliability, or instead amplify uncertainty at a greater computational cost. Addressing this question is critical, as hydrological simulations and future scenario development increasingly form the basis for infrastructure planning and water-related decision-making that will impact land use policies and communities' livelihoods.
Here, we explored the effect of four different resolution meteorological forcing data on the performance of the 1km grid cell CWatM hydrological model for the Ebro basin (approx. 80,000 km2) in Spain. The meteorological datasets have a resolution ranging from 1 arcmin x 1 arcmin (EMO-1, approx. 1.4 km x 1.4 km at 41º latitude), over 5 km x 5 km (EMO-5, approx. 3.6 arcmin x 3.6 arcmin at 41º latitude), to 0.1º (MSWX, E-OBS, approx. 8.4 km x 8.4 km). While traditional model performance evaluations often only assess streamflow performance, we also assessed simulated reservoir volume and inflow results and modelled irrigation amounts throughout the basin. For this, we used traditional validation data obtained through the gauging network of the Sistema Automático de Información Hidrológica (SAIH), as well as irrigation amounts estimated through satellite imagery, hereby testing a novel method for validation that could also be utilised in less well-gauged basins.
The results provide twofold insights and contributions to the current debate on hyper-resolution hydrological modelling. On the one hand, this research addresses the perceived necessity of high-resolution data to produce reliable results for future scenario development, especially since up-to-date high-resolution climate projection data at this level of detail are not widely available. On the other hand, while higher resolution meteorological forcing data can provide highly localised information on water allocation impacts, utilisation of hyper-resolution data must also be seen considering practicality and computational effort. Hydrological modelling results in highly gauged basins can reliably be validated with a wealth of data, whereas remote sensing products provide a feasible alternative for high-resolution hydrological modelling as validation tools in less well-gauged basins. These insights can enable water-allocation decision makers locate areas of highest impact per allocated water unit finding trade-offs for maintaining the local water cycle.
How to cite: Samakovlis, I., Haro Monteagudo, D. D., and Geris, D. J.: Localised impact of different meteorological forcing data and scales in high-resolution hydrological modelling , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-5311, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-5311, 2026.
The increasing scarcity of water resources, driven by rising global demand associated with demographic and economic growth and further exacerbated by climate change, represents a major challenge for many regions worldwide, particularly in Mediterranean and semi-arid areas. In such contexts, the persistence of water deficits, in combination with the increasing frequency and intensity of drought events, intensifies the structural imbalance between demand and availability. This makes the adoption of efficient water management and allocation strategies imperative. The resulting implications are potentially highly significant for the agricultural sector, which is one of the largest consumers of water in the Mediterranean region.
In Campania, southern Italy, these challenges are further amplified by the scarcity of streamflow data, a consequence of the interruption of hydrological monitoring since the early 2000s. This lack of data has hindered assessments of surface water availability and the definition of physically consistent water constraints for irrigation planning over the past two decades.
In this context, the present study proposes a workflow based on an integrated hydrological and agro-economic modelling approach, applied to an irrigation consortium located in a major agricultural area of the region. The reconstruction of streamflow series is achieved through the implementation of hydrological models, which estimate natural flows and the volume of water potentially available at the consortium scale. This approach provides physically consistent constraints on water availability. These outputs feed an agricultural value optimization model, representing the consortium’s crop portfolio in terms of cultivated areas, irrigation requirements, yields, prices, and production costs, generating both water consumption and key economic indicators.
The proposed approach's key strength lies in the consistent integration of the hydrological and agro-economic components, which enable a systematic and forward-looking analysis of the effects that climate change variability has on water resource management. The framework enables the assessment of alternative climate scenarios through the modification of key input variables. These include alterations in the volumes of water available for irrigation and allocable to users, signifying reductions in water availability; variations in crop irrigation requirements associated with rising temperatures and evapotranspiration and the implementation of different water prices, incorporated into crop costs, as a measure for regulating demand. The assessment of the robustness of allocation and production strategies in relation to critical hydrological conditions is supported by future scenarios. Furthermore, they enable the analysis of the potential reorganisation of the crop portfolio, affecting water consumption, return flows and economic indicators in contexts of increasing resource scarcity. The framework thus provides a decision-making tool for proactive drought management, enabling the development of more efficient and resilient water management policies.
How to cite: Palmiero, M. F., Longobardi, A., Gutiérrez-Martín, C., Montilla-López, N. M., and Expósito, A.: An integrated hydro-agro-economic approach for sustainable water resources management in a Mediterranean area, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-11728, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-11728, 2026.
The Water–Energy–Food (WEF) Nexus constitutes the foundational framework for human well-being, as access to these interconnected resources underpins societal prosperity and resilience. In an era of increasing resource pressures driven by population dynamics and geopolitical tensions, assessing the degree of local self-sufficiency within the WEF Nexus becomes essential for sustainable planning and vulnerability reduction. This study introduces a novel methodology for the quantitative and spatial evaluation of WEF self-sufficiency. We develop composite indicators that integrate key elements of the nexus—local availability and management of water resources, renewable energy potential, agricultural productivity, and land use patterns. Beginning from one capita, these indicators are normalized on a scale from 0 (complete dependence on external, distant resources) to 1 (full local self-sufficiency), providing a clear, comparable metric for dynamic assessment at different scales. As a proof-of-concept case study, the methodology is applied to a small rural village in North Euboea, Greece, a region characterized by post-wildfire recovery challenges, traditional agriculture (e.g., olive groves), limited infrastructure, and strong reliance on local hydrological and biomass resources. Spatial analysis, incorporating GIS-derived data on precipitation, soil fertility, solar/wind potential, crop yields, and energy consumption patterns, reveals the village's current self-sufficiency levels across the nexus components. Results highlight strengths in local food production and renewable energy opportunities, while identifying vulnerabilities in water storage and seasonal energy needs. The proposed indicators offer a practical tool for policymakers, enabling targeted interventions to enhance resilience and promote circular practices in order to safeguard prosperity in unrest periods. Future extensions aim to scale the indicators to urban systems and larger regions, exposing structural weaknesses in modern, highly interconnected settlements.
How to cite: Arvanitidis, I. and Sargentis, G.-F.: Spatial Indicators of Dynamic Self-Sufficiency and Resilience in the Water–Energy–Food Nexus. Case study: Small Rural Village in North Euboea, Greece, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-14761, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-14761, 2026.
Water–Energy–Food (WEF) nexus management in regulated alpine basins requires integrated approaches that couple hydrological modeling with multi-objective optimization. Reservoir operations must balance multiple competing objectives (e.g., hydropower production, downstream water demand) under highly variable hydrological conditions. Climate change is further intensifying these trade-offs by altering runoff seasonality and increasing hydrological uncertainty. Fully-coupled modeling frameworks are needed to directly represent the feedback between hydrological processes, reservoir operations, and management objectives, enabling efficient exploration of optimal operating strategies.
This study presents a fully-integrated framework that couples the distributed hydrological model HYPERstreamHS with the Borg Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (Borg-MOEA). The full integration allows the optimization algorithm to directly evaluate joint hydrological responses and management outcomes for different reservoir operating strategies within each iteration, capturing process feedbacks while reducing computational overhead compared to external coupling schemes.
We apply this framework to the Adda River basin in the Italian Alps, a highly regulated hydropower system. Results demonstrate how the coupled approach efficiently identifies Pareto-optimal trade-offs between energy production and competing water management objectives under climate uncertainty, providing quantitative support for adaptive reservoir operations.
Overall, this work provides a transferable modeling framework for multi-objective WEF nexus management in regulated alpine basins.
How to cite: Di Marco, F., Avesani, D., Giuliani, M., and Majone, B.: A fully-integrated hydrological-optimization framework for Water–Energy–Food nexus management in alpine basins, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-20121, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-20121, 2026.
Thailand’s water and climate adaptation are complex and under challenges from a low-lying delta capital city, combination of intensifying floods and droughts, increasing land subsidence, river and coastal erosion, biodiversity loss and sea-level rise. Thailand’s approach to water development and management has always been relying on multiple sector basis without substantial consideration of any interactions between them and institutions and policies are typically flawed, in the long-term leading to inefficient water use and undesirable consequences from development, all are creating an urgent need for sustainable solutions, actions, and practices. As climate change intensifies, growing water scarcity, unpredictability, and vulnerability drive the need for sound baseline economic analyses related to current water use efficiency and water productivity, providing the basis for innovative approaches to allocate water to various sectors and increase the efficient use of existing water supplies with minimal adverse effects, and setting the stage for more sustainable water management. In this study, we assess the water use efficiency (WUE) and economic water productivity across Thailand agricultural sector to focus on the efficient use of water resources under water scarcity threat at the basin-level based on standardized terminologies and formulas from modified version of the FAO’s monitoring framework. Meteorological, physical geospatial, Gross Provincial Products, and historical allocated surface water and groundwater to agricultural sectors in irrigated area data (based on the System of Environmental Economic Accounting for Water approach) are collected and the economic efficiency in agricultural sector expressed as a quantitative ratio between the amount of monetary production (i.e., value added in agricultural sector) per area as resources or efforts made for its realization are investigated. With increasing in water allocated to dry-season irrigated area, slow rising in the economic efficiency of agricultural sector is observed. Change in the economic water productivity defined as a ratio between the amount of monetary production per unit irrigated water resource made to obtain them (THB/m3), is further evaluated. Declining in the economic water productivity is observed with increasing of dry-season allocated water, suggesting that the economic water activity is complex, requiring specific level of resource consumption to achieve the efficiency, not entirely corresponding to the allocated expenditure. Dry-season water allocation escalates consistently with increase in annual rainfall and growing irrigated crop area, but fails to enhance both water economic productivity and sustainability. Greater attention needs to be focused on managing surface water and groundwater for conjunctive use. We need a better understanding of biophysical and socio-economic changes in basins over time and improved measures of basin-level efficiencies before we can determine in a given situation the potential for increasing water productivity through responsive interventions and policies. Decisions on basin-level allocations among sectors cannot be based strictly on economic efficiency but they must involve value judgements as to how best to benefit society inclusively as a whole. This will include setting priorities in the management of water resources to meet objectives such as ensuring sustainability, meeting food-security needs and providing the more vulnerable segments of society with access to water.
How to cite: Putthividhya, A., Jirasirirak, S., and Prajamwong, S.: Assessment of Groundwater and Surface Water Use Efficiency (WUE) and Economic Water Productivity across Thailand Agricultural Sector through the Lens of Sustainability, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-3043, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-3043, 2026.
The Hetao Irrigation District, located in northwestern China, is characterized by severe water scarcity, with water supply for production and daily use highly dependent on diversions from the Yellow River. The annual average water withdrawal of the irrigation district accounts for approximately one seventh of the total Yellow River water use in Inner Mongolia. Under the unified management of water resources across the Yellow River Basin, future water diversions to the Hetao Irrigation District are expected to further decrease, exacerbating water scarcity and associated conflicts. Therefore, clarifying the ecological water demand required to maintain ecological balance, as well as the proportion of different ecological water consumption components under current conditions, is of great significance for ensuring ecological stability and sustainable socioeconomic development in the irrigation district.
Based on the concept of ecological water consumption, this study systematically analyzes the composition of ecological water use and its major influencing factors in the Hetao Irrigation District. Using the WACM model, 11,819 calculation units were delineated to construct an ecological water consumption assessment framework. Model parameters were calibrated using data from 1990–2018 and validated with observations from 2019–2023. On this basis, total water consumption, Yellow River water consumption, ecological water consumption, and ecological Yellow River water consumption were quantified, and the recommended water demand for maintaining ecological balance under the current development pattern was determined.
The results indicate that water consumption in the irrigation district is mainly influenced by meteorological conditions, underlying surface characteristics, and human activities, among which meteorological factors play a dominant role. Model performance was evaluated in terms of water surface evaporation, drainage processes, and the spatial distribution of groundwater depth. The relative error of simulated water surface evaporation was less than 10% with a Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) exceeding 0.8, while the relative error of drainage simulation was less than 20% with an NSE greater than 0.7. The simulated spatial pattern of groundwater depth was consistent with observations, demonstrating good model applicability.
From 2009 to 2023, the annual average total water consumption of the Hetao Irrigation District was 6.18 billion m³, including 4.53 billion m³ of agricultural water consumption and 1.65 billion m³ of ecological water consumption. The annual average Yellow River water consumption was 4.39 billion m³, of which ecological water use accounted for 0.91 billion m³. Agricultural water use constituted the largest proportion of both total water consumption (73.3%) and Yellow River water consumption (72.5%), but exhibited a declining trend over time, whereas ecological water consumption showed a continuous increase. Within ecological water use, Wuliangsuhai Lake accounted for the largest share (approximately 32%) and remained relatively stable at about 0.29 billion m³, providing an important reference for determining its ecological water supply. The study concludes that, under the current water use pattern, maintaining ecological balance in the Hetao Irrigation District requires an annual water demand of approximately 6.70 billion m³, including 4.53 billion m³ diverted from the Yellow River.
How to cite: Liu, B. and Zhang, W.: Assessment of Ecological Water Requirements for Maintaining Ecological Balance under the Current Development Pattern of the Hetao Irrigation District, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4806, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4806, 2026.
Cheap and abundant nitrogen (N) fertilizer has driven revolutionary increases in global crop yields. However, N is susceptible to being lost from agricultural fields and transported into water bodies where, in excess, it contributes to drinking water contamination, harmful algal blooms, and hypoxia. This work investigates the potential to improve the Pareto front of crop yield and N loss outcomes through high-frequency, in-season soil sampling and fertilizer application. The current paradigm in agriculture is (1) to apply N either entirely before plant emergence or split between pre-plant and a single “side-dressing” after plant emergence and (2) to measure soil N concentrations yearly or less often. However, advances in agricultural field robotics and remote sensing are making it possible to attain and act on soil data more quickly and precisely and thus to maintain crop yield while decreasing N losses. To date though, few studies have attempted to describe optimal fertilizer strategies that make use of such high-frequency monitoring and actuation tools or how much N loss abatement these strategies could achieve. Indeed, such analysis is challenging due to the complex and high-dimensional nature of the N management problem.
This study provides a model abstraction and discretization scheme that make dynamic programming (DP) for N management computationally feasible while maintaining decision-relevant features of the problem. The DP algorithm computes a strategy on incremental fertilizer application rates and timing based on the N and water content in the soil as well as weather predictions. The strategy is optimized for a maximum expected land profitability minus a fine that is incurred when N losses exceed a statutory threshold. By varying the level of the fine for N loss violations, we map the DP outcomes to a Pareto front that characterizes the maximum land profitability that can be achieved at different likelihoods of violating the N loss threshold. Finally, we compute multiple strategies via DP, each using different frequencies for soil monitoring and fertilizer application, and we show that increasing the frequency shifts the Pareto front toward improved (lower) likelihoods of N loss violation without sacrificing land profitability.
How to cite: Gleason, R., Schmid, N., Wallington, K., and Lygeros, J.: Optimization of precision fertilizer management to reduce nitrogen pollution while maintaining agricultural productivity, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-12769, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-12769, 2026.
The risk of water scarcity is increasing with climate change, even in countries with significant water resources such as France. Over the past 10 years, French governments and public agencies have implemented public policies to adapt to climate change. Identifying and quantifying stress on water resources is essential for developing effective public policies. Our objectives were therefore to estimate the potential stress on surface water resources in 2050 under three demand scenarios. At the watershed level, the environmental flow requirement, water needs for all human activities (agriculture, industry, energy production, etc.), and future water resources were compared on a monthly basis for a year with high rainfall and a year with low rainfall in the spring and summer. Two climate change projections were considered (with the RCP8.5 and the biais correction ADAMONT) : HadGEM2-ES/CCLM4-8-17 and CNRM-CM5/ALADIN63. The environmental flow requirement was estimated from the variable monthly flow method. The water demand of human activities were estimated using the latest climate projections and an integrated water resource management tool. Future water resources were estimated based on the results of the EXPLORE2 project, which provides daily projections of the flow of France's main rivers, using two hydrological model : ORCHIDEE and SMASH. Three demand scenarios were considered: the “trend” scenario continues past trends, the “public policies” scenario takes into account changes in water demand for certain activities, and the “disruptive” scenario envisages a water-efficient society. This study is the first national-scale study to estimate potential water stress in 2050, taking into account all human activities. Main results are : (i) Under both climate projections considered, for 93% of the watersheds, envrionmental flow requirement would not be satisfied for at least one month of the year in dry years (low rainfall during spring and summer), (ii) under the HadGEM2-ES/CCLM4-8-17 climate projection, water consumption will increase in 2050 in all scenarios, (iii) a dry year could lead to severe water stress across 88% of the country, and water restrictions would need to be enforced and (iv) only a public policy similar to the « disruptive » scenario could mitigate the increase in water stress.
How to cite: Gaillot, A., Arambourou, H., and Ferrière, S.: Guiding national water resource policies: An example of estimating potential water stress in France in 2050., EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-12988, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-12988, 2026.
Crop production is the biggest water user and key contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental degradations globally. Detailed, timely and multi-sourced modelling and mapping of water footprint, i.e., water consumption, for crop production are important precondition for wise and sustainable agricultural water allocations towards the aiming just and safe globe. However, the system boundary, calculation principle, accuracy criteria, and practical implementations of crop water footprint assessment are still in debate.
We developed three types of improved crop water footprint modelling approaches for faster updates of gridded datasets for different purposes across river basin, national and global scales. (i) Distinguishing impacts of irrigation techniques on green (soil water) and blue (irrigation) water consumption in large scale (Wang et al., 2023; Yue et al., 2025). (ii) Machine learning modelling of green and blue water footprints for fast scenario analysis considering effects from intensive human activities (Li et al., 2025). (iii) Robust long-term global crop water footprint dataset generation with fewer inputs and shorter time (Liu et al., 2025). In addition, we investigated the feasibility of extending system boundary for crop water footprint estimation in line with the other environmental footprints, capable for monitoring the status of crop production systems in terms of synergies and trade-offs among resources appropriation and environmental impacts (Feng et al., 2022; Sun et al., unpublished).
References
Feng, B., Zhuo, L., Mekonnen, M.M., Marston, L., Yang, X., Xu, Z., Liu, Y., Wang, W., Li, Z., Ji, X., Wu, P. (2022) Inputs for staple crop production in China drive burden shifting of water and carbon footprints transgressing part of provincial planetary boundaries, Water Research, 2022, 221: 118803.
Li, Z., Sahotra, H., Ahmad, S., Wang, W., Yang, Z., Wu, P., Khan, E., Zhuo, L. (2025). A distributed machine learning model for blue and green water resources with transferable applications in similar climatic zones. Water Resources Research, 61: e2024WR039169.
Liu, Y., Zhuo, L., Ji, X., Tian, P., Gao, R., Wu, P. (2025). Accounting and evolution of global spatial explicit blue and green water footprint of maize production with fewer inputs. Water Resources Research, 61: e2024WR037184.
Wang, W., Zhuo, L., Ji, X., Yue, Z., Li, Z., Li,M., Zhang, H., Gao, R., Yan, C., Zhang, P., Wu, P. (2023) A gridded dataset of consumptive water footprints, evaporation, transpiration, and associated benchmarks related to crop production in China during 2000–2018. Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 4803–4827.
Yue, Z., Zhuo, L., Ji, X., Tian, P., Gao, J., Wang, W., Sun, F., Duan, Y., Wu, P. (2025) Water-saving irrigated area expansion hardly enhances crop yield while saving water under climate scenarios in China. Communications Earth & Environment, 6:295.
How to cite: Zhuo, L., Wang, W., Xu, Z., Li, Z., Yue, Z., and Sun, F.: Improving crop water footprint modelling and mapping towards comprehensive sustainability assessment for agricultural systems, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15775, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15775, 2026.
Rice paddies account for approximately 22% of global agricultural methane emissions, while South, East, and Southeast Asia together contribute nearly 90% of the global rice-cultivated area. Consequently, mitigation planning for agricultural methane frequently targets rice systems with little nuance across these vast geographies. Such assessments often assume stylized representative hydrologic environments, such as continuous flooding in irrigated regions, to estimate baseline emissions. However, recent studies have revealed much greater heterogeneity in hydrologic conditions within rice-growing regions including irrigated systems, leading to substantial spatial and temporal variability in methane emissions from rice paddies.
In this study, we used satellite-derived planting dates and soil moisture data in conjunction with the process-based ORYZA model to estimate methane emissions for the Indian states of Bihar, West Bengal, and Punjab. Our results indicate a relatively consistent pattern of methane emissions in Punjab, whereas emissions in Bihar exhibited pronounced spatial and temporal variability. For instance, southwestern and eastern Bihar showed higher average methane emissions, with relatively low temporal variability, averaging around 141 kg ha⁻¹ and coefficients of variation ranging from 29% to 59%. In contrast, the northwestern region of Bihar exhibited lower average emissions (approximately 95.5 kg ha⁻¹) but much higher temporal variability, with a coefficient of variation of 77%.
We further identified key drivers of methane emission variability, including total seasonal rainfall, evapotranspiration, and irrigation intensity. Seasonal rainfall exceeding 1000 mm was associated with higher methane emissions, whereas a greater number of irrigation events did not correspond to increased CH₄ emissions. These findings suggest that, for a state such as Bihar, there is limited potential for methane mitigation through improvements in irrigation management alone, and that alternative soil and crop management strategies may be required to reduce emissions from current baseline levels.
How to cite: Sankar, H. N., Calle, L. A., Urfels, A., Kumar, V., Eagle, A., and McDonald, A. J.: Decadal Analysis of Baseline Methane Emissions from Rice Cultivation: Identifying Spatiotemporal Hotspots for Mitigation Targeting, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15751, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15751, 2026.
Posters virtual: Fri, 8 May, 14:00–18:00 | vPoster spot A
EGU26-11912 | ECS | Posters virtual | VPS11
Mapping Inter-State Rice Virtual Water Trade in India Using Complex Network AnalysisFri, 08 May, 14:27–14:30 (CEST) vPoster spot A
Inter-state agricultural trade plays a critical role in redistributing water resources across India, particularly for water-intensive crops such as rice. This study examines the structure of inter-state rice virtual water trade in India using a directed, weighted complex network approach. Physical inter-state rice trade data covering all Indian states were obtained from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS) and transformed into virtual water flows using crop-specific virtual water content coefficient for rice (m³/ ton), assumed to be uniform across states. This transformation enables an assessment of trade relationships in terms of embodied water transfers rather than physical commodity volumes. States are represented as nodes and directed edges denote rice virtual water flows from exporting to importing states, weighted by total virtual water volumes (m³). Network properties were analysed using strength-based measures to quantify import and export intensities, betweenness centrality to identify states functioning as key intermediaries in trade pathways, and PageRank to assess systemic importance within the national virtual water trade system. These metrics jointly allow differentiation between dominant exporting states, import-dependent states, and structurally central states influencing the overall redistribution of water through trade. The analysis reveals a highly centralized rice virtual water trade network, characterised by a small group of states accounting for a disproportionate share of total virtual water exports. States such as Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, and Madhya Pradesh emerge as major exporters, while several other states rely predominantly on inter-state imports to meet rice demand. The concentration of virtual water exports among a limited number of producing regions indicates strong structural dependencies within the national trade network. Several major exporting states like Punjab are also subject to increasing pressure on water resources, the observed trade patterns raise concerns regarding the sustainability of current production-trade configurations. By integrating crop-specific virtual water accounting with complex network analysis, this study provides a quantitative framework for identifying key contributors, dependencies, and structural vulnerabilities in India’s inter-state agricultural water redistribution system. The methodology is transferable to other crops, years, and regional contexts and offers a basis for informing discussions on sustainable agricultural trade and water resource management.
How to cite: Badoni, A. and Reddy, M. J.: Mapping Inter-State Rice Virtual Water Trade in India Using Complex Network Analysis, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-11912, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-11912, 2026.
EGU26-9585 | Posters virtual | VPS11
A Nexus-Based Approach to Water Resources Assessment: Practical Application of the WEAP Model in TajikistanFri, 08 May, 14:30–14:33 (CEST) vPoster spot A
To address climate change and population growth, Central Asia must urgently adopt a holistic water resource management strategy, moving beyond traditional sectoral approaches to embrace a water-energy-food-ecosystems (WEFE) nexus approach. The WEAP model, a key research tool, integrates hydrological data and socioeconomic factors to create scenarios considering glacier melt, irrigation expansion, and energy generation. WEAP, unlike hydrological models, highlights unmet demand, demonstrating the sectoral impacts of water scarcity for decision-makers. The Nexus approach uses the WEAP model to optimize the Vakhsh hydropower cascade (Nurek and Rogun plants), balancing energy security, environmental flows, and predictable agricultural water supply. The WEAP model assesses innovative irrigation technologies in the Zarafshon basin to enhance food security and cross-border cooperation between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The scenario analysis shows that modernizing irrigation systems reduces the burden on the ecosystem and ensures stable harvests even in dry years. Integrating climate forecasts into WEAP allows for water availability scenarios, enabling adaptation measures like optimized cropping and expanded runoff management. WEAP modeling in the Vakhsh and Zarafshon basins highlights the importance of cross-sectoral considerations for water resource management in Tajikistan, providing a basis for sustainable water system decisions.
How to cite: Niyazov, J.: A Nexus-Based Approach to Water Resources Assessment: Practical Application of the WEAP Model in Tajikistan, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-9585, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-9585, 2026.
EGU26-9627 | Posters virtual | VPS11
Predictive WEAP modeling for NEXUS management in the Naryn River basin (Kyrgyzstan)Fri, 08 May, 14:33–14:36 (CEST) vPoster spot A
The primary goal of hydrological modeling is to generate reliable forecasts of future changes in water resources. In the arid conditions of Central Asia, where irrigated agriculture demands significant water resources during summer, early forecasting is crucial for planning water allocation between upstream and downstream regions.
The WEAP model offers a flexible and user-friendly framework for addressing various water resource management challenges. It supports decision-makers and experts in constructing and selecting optimal solutions for water management. Accurate hydrological forecasts of water availability during the growing season are essential for effective water resource planning. National hydrometeorological services in Central Asia are adopting and adapting modern, effective methods for hydrological forecasting. The primary goal of developing a methodology for forecasting river water content in the Kyrgyz Republic, using the WEAP model, is to create a calculation algorithm, simulate a water management model, and implement this methodology into the practices of the Kyrgyz Republic's National Hydrometeorological Services. This approach will be applied to forecast water availability in the Naryn River during the growing season, monitor changes in the Toktogul Reservoir's water volumes, support hydroelectric power production, and facilitate agricultural irrigation. Advanced forecasts of low water availability during the growing season are vital for implementing preventive measures to ensure efficient water use by water and energy management organizations.
The WEAP model allows for the use of various scenarios, such as climatic ones, with a focus on the national level, while introducing various innovative technologies for irrigation and energy conservation in the upcoming years. This is significant for long-term planning in water management activities and the energy strategy of both the country and the region.
How to cite: Kalashnikova, O.: Predictive WEAP modeling for NEXUS management in the Naryn River basin (Kyrgyzstan), EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-9627, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-9627, 2026.
EGU26-15614 | ECS | Posters virtual | VPS11
Assessing the Water-Energy-Food Nexus under Climate and Socio-economic Change in Vu Gia – Thu Bon River Basin, VietnamFri, 08 May, 14:57–15:00 (CEST) vPoster spot A
The Vu Gia – Thu Bon River Basin (VGTBRB), Central Vietnam’s largest river basin (about 10,350 km2), flows through Quang Nam Province and Da Nang City. It supplies water for multiple purposes, including hydropower generation (with around 20 operational upstream hydropower plants), irrigation, and domestic use (accounting for almost 70% of domestic use for Da Nang). While this multifunctional role supports the regional socio-economic development, the basin is increasingly challenged by intensifying water, energy, and food (WEF) demands driven by population growth, urban expansion, tourism development, and salinity intrusion, highlighting the need for an integrated Water-Energy-Food nexus approach.
Despite growing global research on the WEF nexus, no comprehensive statistical WEF nexus models have been developed for the VGTBRB. Previous studies in the region have largely focused on individual sectors, overlooking the role of salinity intrusion and its implications for water demand, food production, and tourism-related resource use. This study addresses this gap by employing a WEF nexus framework combined with System Dynamics Modelling (SDM) to capture sectoral interactions, feedback mechanisms, and trade-offs in water allocation under future climate and socio-economic scenarios. The analysis incorporates historical data from 2010 to 2024 for model calibration and validation, and projections for 2025–2050 aligned with climate change scenarios and the regional Master Plan for 2021–2030 with a vision to 2050.
Results indicate pronounced seasonal variability in water demand, critical feedback between temperature and domestic water use, and interactions between rainfall and water use that influence the risks of salinity intrusion at downstream water supply intakes. In addition, a positive relationship is identified between tourism growth and water demand, particularly during dry seasons, which exacerbates water stress.
By explicitly integrating salinity and tourism dynamics, this study pioneers a WEF nexus-based modelling approach for the VGTBRB. The findings provide policy-relevant insights to enhance water system resilience under climate and socio-economic change, support progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, and inform integrated resource governance in a tourism-dependent, salinity-affected river basin.
How to cite: Hoang, L., Shamseldin, A. Y., Henning, T. F. P., Latu, K., Zorn, C., and Dong, S.: Assessing the Water-Energy-Food Nexus under Climate and Socio-economic Change in Vu Gia – Thu Bon River Basin, Vietnam, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15614, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15614, 2026.
