Investigating the impacts of climate on agricultural sector with emphasis on the role of adaptation strategies in this sector

Agriculture is one of the main sectors affected by climate change. Although recently some studies about the nature and size climate change effect on the physical variables of water resources and agriculture have been done, however economic perspectives and the role of adaptation strategies have been less studied empirically. The contribution of this study is modeling real economic behavior of stakeholders in agriculture and its integration with socio-economic and climate change scenarios. Achievement of Research objectives is pursuing through implementation and linked weather generator models, hydrology neural network and crop-water response functions and optimization models of positive mathematical programming. Results showed that by mid-century, climate change will result to reduce precipitation and increase temperature parameters in the Zayende-Rud water basin. The direct result of these changes will be reduce of basin surface water resources 4.3 and 8.1 percent compared to the base scenario up to 1420 and 1450, respectively. Results of economic model showed that the consequence of this change for the agricultural sector in the worst case (without adaptation strategies) will be reduction of 18 and 33% in gross margin up to 30 and 60 future years respectively. Also, results confirms that selection of optimum cropping pattern and selection of optimum deficit irrigation strategies can provide good opportunity to deal with this situation and reduce its effects to 7.2 and 10 percent. Design a Strategic Plan on irrigation and cropping pattern consistent with regional climate and socio- economic trend based on country watershed's unit is proposed.