Evaluation and Simulation of the water footprint of agricultural products in climate change scenarios: A case study of Kashf Roud Basin

an attempt was made to simulate and evaluate the water footprint of agricultural products under the conditions of climate change in the Kashf River watershed. I, WEAP was used for the integrated assessment of water resources. Also, the MABIA tool available in the WEAP was used to simulate the effects of climate change on crops such as wheat, barley, alfalfa, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and fodder corn. The simulation of water and carbon footprints was done using the outputs of WEAP and MABIA models for the years 2013-2040.respectively. The biggest decrease in yield in the middle scenario was attributed to the two products barley and alfalfa with 25.7 and 25.6 percent. Also, the highest amount of change in net water requirement belongs to potato crops equal to 64.8%, and onion at 59.37% in the pessimistic scenario compared to the current conditions. In general, from the calculation of the water footprint, it was found that the highest water footprint of the selected products is sugar beet, fodder corn, onion, alfalfa, tomato, and cucumber with 18, 15, 14, 14, 13, and 12 thousand cubic meters. The lowest carbon footprint was assigned to wheat, barley, alfalfa, and fodder corn products, the water footprint of agricultural products will be larger than the green water footprint. The increase in evaporation and transpiration and the decrease in rainfall at the basin level, show the negative consequences of the climate change phenomenon for the farmers of the region.