مجله مدیریت آب و آبیاری
سال سیزدهم شماره 1 (بهار 1402)

Economic valuation of water has an important and decisive role in the efficient allocation of water resources, appropriate policies and effective decision-making. The literature of the country contains a large number of articles and significant efforts in the field of economic valuation of water. The extent and diversity of Published studies requires that a general overview of the economic valuation of water in the country be provided by reviewing these studies. In this article, by extracting, categorizing and analyzing the existing studies on water valuation in different sectors of the economy, we try to reach a general conclusion about the policies proposed and common methods in these studies. In addition, this paper attempts to identify study gaps by critique of the methods used and, finally, offers suggestions for future research in the field of water economic valuation. According to the summary, increasing the price of water in all uses, including industrial, urban and agricultural uses, is recommended. The conditions for water value-based pricing are available for industrial and urban use, and in the agricultural sector requires government support and technology development. The economic value of water-related ecosystem services is among the highest levels of economic value in water uses. Therefore, it is recommended that conservation of natural flow in aquatic ecosystems be a priority for resource allocation.

Global database and satellite products with high spatial and time-lapse power, can be seen as a suitable alternative source for conducting studies of water balance components in statistically deficient areas and areas with no uniform distribution of stations. Use of this data provided that it has sufficient accuracy, for Iran, which many of its parts, especially desert and mountainous areas, due to the low density of stations, the short statistical period of new stations always faces problems of accessing local and time information in the region. They will be, of great importance it is. The main goal of the research is to assess the global database and satellite products to estimate real rainfall, Evapotranspiration, and changes in water storage in the Tashk-Bakhtegan basin. Used GLDAS, PERSIANN - CDR, CHIRPS, NCEP database to assess the rainfall according to our objectives. For real Evapotranspiration, the real amounts of evaporation and absorption were first extracted based on the Balance Torrent White equation, and the results were evaluated by the GLDAS database, GLEAM. The GRACE satellite was used to estimate the changes in the region's water reserves and to assess it the GLDAS satellite was used to extract annual changes in groundwater. Results obtained showed that the PERSIANN - CDR database performed best and consistent with its observational data across all statistical indicators before and after the Bias correction. GLEAM also had the best statistical performance in estimating Evapotranspiration before and after correction with Balance Torrent White Equation data. Comparison of the observation levels of underground water with data extracted from GRACE and GLDAS satellites indicates the existence of a similar trend, and, based on the power of GRACE's low locality segregation and the low area studied, the results for groundwater changes and Ground water is acceptable. The results of the present study show data from the PERSIANN- CDR satellite for rain, GLEAM model for real evaporation and absorption and GRACE satellite for estimating ground water changes as a convenient tool for making early, quick and low - cost estimates on Water Balance Components It will be used.

This study aimed to estimate groundwater recharge along with other balance components (runoff, evapotranspiration, and transpiration) in Hashtgerd plain, using the WetSpass-M distribution model in the conditions of climate change and land use in the next 30 years. To study the effects of climate change, the output of five models under four emission scenarios, i.e., RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6, and RCP8.5 of the Fifth Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) was utilized. The LARS-WG model was also used for the downscaleing of the climatic data. Land-use mapping was performed using Landsat images in 1990, 2005, and 2020 processed in ENVI 5.3. The Markov chain method in TerrSet software was used to predict land-use changes for 2050. In the end, the effect of climate change and land use on underground water supply and other water balance components was simulated using the WetSpass-M distribution model for the period 2050-2020 and the effect of climate and land use scenarios was applied on it. The climate change results showed that the annual temperature will increase by 1.2 and 3.2 degrees Celsius until 2050 for the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively, and the annual precipitation will decrease by 1.95 and 4.47 Percent for both scenarios. The results of land use change show an increase of 105, 41, and 8 percent for residential, barren, and agricultural land, respectively, and a 94 percent decrease in pastures. With the increase of residential and barren uses and the decrease of pastureland, the permeability of the land will decrease, and as a result, the amount of surface discharge of the aquifer will decrease. Estimates, in general, showed that climate change has caused a decrease, land use change has increased the feeding of the aquifer in such a way that in the most critical scenario the amount of feeding will reach 220.6, and the balance of the aquifer will reach 115.9 million cubic meters per year. Because of climate and land use changes, the share of evaporation and transpiration has increased and the share of rescharge and runoff from precipitation has decreased. In general, in the highlands due to more rainfall and in agricultural areas due to irrigation return water, the contribution of underground water supply has increased.

The ecosystem service of water yield is affected by damaging human activities, and the estimation of its quantity ‎through modeling is the first step to sustainable management of this service. This research applied the InVEST ‎hydrological model to quantify the ecosystem service of water yield and its valuation in the northern arid and semi-arid ‎sub-basins of Kerman province. First, for modelling the water yield were entered the maps such as annual average ‎precipitation, depth of root limiting layers, plant accessible water capacity, land use/land cover (LULC), and the ‎boundaries of the basin and sub-basins, and the approximate amount of actual evapotranspiration (AET) in each pixel. ‎Then maps of estimated water yield in each pixel was obtained. The model calculated 5112.43 million cubic meters of ‎water with a value of more than 418500 billion Rails are produced annually, the highest amount of water yield is in sub-‎basin one (Abargho-Sirjan) with 2103 million cubic meters per year and the lowest amount of water yield in sub-region ‎three (north Kavir-e lut) with the amount of 741.84 MCM. The results showed that the value of supply the ‎water yield service is strongly influenced by the spatial changes of LULC. Dense range lands produce 27630.7 MCM of ‎water per hectare, and each hectare of dense forest can produce 1104.6 MCM of water. Therefore the role of vegetation ‎shows the influence of water infiltration and feeding of aquifers in high areas. The results of this study can be used in ‎spatial planning to reduce the destructive effects of floods and droughts, prevent land degradation and develop vegetation, ‎feed aquifers, and also estimate damages in green accounting.‎

Most of methods to determine environmental flow in Iran have been dealt with the required depth for movement of target species whilst that interaction of flow and turbulence in river morphology should be paid more attention. Flow turbulence could be of significance in rivers, however, it has rarely been considered in river restoration and habitat evaluation, due to its complexity. In this paper, attempts have been made to review the interaction between hydrodynamics and organisms and their measurements in rivers to signify the turbulence investigation in river management. In this concern turbulence properties related to the flow environment (i. e. inclusive, intensity, frequency and flow structures) have been studied. In addition, role of vegetation cover and organisms have been investigated in-depth in the flow structures. In this connection, potential threats and opportunities have been put forward for river wildlife conservation. With regards to limited knowledge of this topic in Iran, this research could enable scientists and practitioners to understand the challenges for interaction of turbulence and restoration, particularly ecologically, in rivers.

This study aims to investigate and specify surface and groundwater sources portions in the physical supply table of the environmental-economic water accounting method (SEEWA-Water) in the Abshar Irrigation District through the developing hydraulic simulation model of flow in the main & lateral canals, spatial analysis of surface water distribution process, and water extraction analysis from exploitation tube-wells located in the district. For this purpose, the simulation of water distribution within irrigated units was conducted by developing the integral-delay simulator model in MATLAB. Then, spatial analysis of surface water distribution adequacy was conducted in GIS under different operational scenarios. The simulation results of surface water distribution indicated the decreasing trend of the adequacy of surface water distribution and delivery from upstream to downstream catchments. The spatial analysis results showed the share of surface and groundwater separately for 59 villages with rights and then for each village according to the main crops. The results showed that the surface water distributed in each sub-channels upstream and downstream villages provided 35-48% and 60-49% of agricultural demand, respectively. The spatial analysis (the water resources portions based on the main crops of the cropping pattern) reveals the customized components in the physical supply table in the SEEA-Water accounting method for an irrigation district, surface & groundwater water resources share, and distribution losses in Abshar Irrigation District.

The quality monitoring of groundwater networks is of great importance due to its importance in different sectors of agriculture, drinking, industry, etc., and the necessity of its periodic use leads to the recognition of quality changes of water resources in different periods. In this study, the entropy theory based on random forest was used to quality monitoring of electrical conductivity (EC) and total dissolved solids (TDS) in the groundwater of 12 wells in the Tasouj plain located in south of Lake Urmia from 2002 through 2019. In order to investigate the interaction of wells in the aquifer area, the conventional method (multivariate regression) and the random forest algorithm were used. By comparing the performance of the two mentioned models in simulating EC and TDS values in a 12-variable mode, the results showed that the random forest model has a better performance and a lower error rate than the multi-variable regression model. On average, the random forest algorithm reduced the error rate by 40% and 56% in simulation EC and TDS values, respectively, in the studied aquifer. The ranking results of the studied wells showed that the Qara Tape well has the highest rank and the Amestjan well has the least important rank among the studied wells, which indicates the importance of the information extracted from the Qara Tape well. According to the zoning of the information transformation index in the aquifer area, the results showed that there is no limitation in monitoring of EC values in the aquifer, and the scattering of the wells is the best. There is no shortage of wells in terms of exchange of salinity information in the study area. Regarding the TDS values, a lack of wells was observed in the central areas and the eastern and western border areas.

Adaptation to water shortage requires systematic planning for water productivity improvement. In this research, some solutions were presented and were prioritized to increase water productivity in the eastern and western regions of the Qazvin irrigation network. The gross biomass water productivity and the net biomass water productivity was obtained 0.8-3 and 1.7-4 Kg/m3, respectively. The provided solutions were considered in four categories of technical, management, organizational and agricultural solutions. Data were analyzed using the average and the standard deviation indices and independent t-test. The importance and impact of solutions to improve productivity in the upstream and downstream of the network were obtained 4.08±0.8 and 4.26±0.75 (out of 5 points), respectively which shows that the impact of these solutions in improving the productivity of the downstream area of the network is more than the upstream area of the network. T-test showed that some of these factors have significant differences in the east and west of the network and Solutions can be provided separately upstream and downstream of the network to improve productivity. By analyzing the results obtained from the independent T-test, A2, A3, A6, A13 and A17 are effective factors in improving the water productivity in the downstream of the network, and by using these factors in the upstream. The results of this study and the downstream and upstream productivity analysis approach can be used by researchers and managers in planning to improve water productivity in the agricultural sector.

Due to population growth and industrial progress, the only important issue isn`t the lack of water resources, but besides that, the issues of runoff management, its quality, and urban wastewater management are also important. In this research, Khoorsuzan estuary located in Bandar Abbas city, Hormozgan province, was studied in terms of water quality. SWMM rainfall-runoff dynamic model was used for quality modeling of regional runoff. Hydraulic modeling was done for four precipitation events. The results of the sensitivity analysis showed that three parameters, percentage of impermeability of sub-basins, curve number and channel roughness coefficient, were the most effective parameters, respectively. Calibration and verification were done based on the objective functions of MRE and N.S. Its results were within the very good range of matching the model with the observational data for four times. Finally, qualitative modeling was done for four target pollutants, including COD, TDS, NO2 and PO4, and the qualitative results showed that the model was in good agreement with the observational laboratory data. At the end, three scenarios were considered to solve the problem. The first scenario showed the reduction of TDS pollutant concentration up to 84.52%. The results of the second scenario for COD, NO2 and PO4 pollutants reduced up to 100% and the application of the third scenario effectively reduced TDS, PO4, COD and NO2 pollutants. Based on the results of this research, the amount of water pollution around Khoorsuzan without wastewater management is more than the standard and the runoff from rainfall does not help to reduce pollution.

In the present study, in order to optimally use the water and soil resources of Mazandaran province according to the potential of the region, the comparative method was used. For this purpose, the current situation of the province was first identified in terms of water and soil resources and the cultivation pattern, and in the next step, by comparing and adapting other regions of the world that have similar climatic conditions to Mazandaran province, modeling the experiences of those countries in the field of crop cultivation It was carried out according to the potential of the region. The results of the comparison phase showed that a total of 158 points on the earth had the same climate level as Mazandaran province. Based on the comparative results obtained, the current cultivation pattern in Mazandaran province should be slightly changed according to water and soil resources. The cultivated area of products such as cotton, which has been favored by farmers in this province in the past, can increase again in this province as a suitable product for the textile industry. Also, a tree like olive that can be used in different fields (eating raw, extracting oil and animal fodder) and considering that in Mazandaran climate, in many mountainous areas of this province, olive oil extracting species have shown good performance, Therefore, this product can also be recommended. Also, the possibility of growing some new crops in Mazandaran province, which was done through interviews with the professors of Sari University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources and research projects, which products such as medicinal plants are also suggested.

There are two limitations in the analysis of drought characteristics, which this study has investigated and resolved. First, the limitation of the length of the statistical period regarding the presentation of meteorological drought characteristics and the other is the frequency analysis. The first case was solved by using CRU climate data and the second case by using copula functions in this research. In this study, while checking the accuracy of the rainfall values extracted from the CRU climate model on a monthly scale, the frequency analysis of drought severity and duration characteristics based on the SPI index in the Zarinehrood basin has been analyzed. The results of the investigations showed that the values of the CRU scenario have a suitable accuracy and error rate with the observational data and have a suitable certainty. By extending the statistical period to 60 years, the SPI index was estimated in the studied area, which indicates the increase in the severity and duration of droughts in recent years. 45% of the studied statistical period had a lack of rainfall and 8% of the studied months were faced with severe drought. By choosing the distribution of generalized extreme values and logistic for drought severity and duration series in the studied stations, Frank's copula was selected for drought severity-duration pair variable. The results of investigation and joint analysis of drought severity -duration pair variables led to the presentation of drought probability curves in the region, which estimate the regional characteristics of drought with different probabilities. The presented approach has better performance due to the increase of time series memory and the use of joint distribution and copula functions and shows the characteristics of drought better.

The Afghanistan-Pakistan belt is of great geopolitical significance due to the location of Gilgit-Baltistan (a part of the disputed region of Kashmir), the strategic Wakhan Corridor, the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), and the Khyber Pass, as well as one of the most important world's drug trade passway in southern Afghanistan and Pakistani Baluchistan. Conflicts over the Kabul river basin management, which originates in Afghanistan and enters Pakistan through the Khyber Pass, have exacerbated the complexity of the issues related to the belt. Using a descriptive-analytical method and referring to library resources, this article has analyzed the various hydropolitical dimensions of this river and the roots of the conflict between two riparians to identify a part of the issues related to this belt. The results reveal that the dispute between the two riparian countries on managing shared water in the Kabul river basin is not limited to related technical issues. This conflict is part of an intertwined set of disputes on economic, geographical, political, security, and legal issues; without considering these complex dimensions, it is impossible to understand the type of disputes over this river and its roots.

The concept of risk is considered as a method and technique in expressing the emergence and presentation of risks. There are different approaches to present this concept, one of these techniques is using the fishbone method. On the other hand, determining the risk without knowing the conceptual dimensions is meaningless, so the purpose of this study is to use a combination of brainstorming, SWOT and fish bone decision making methods to analyze the main causes of accidents and risks associated with canals, deal with details, categories classifying them and turning threats into opportunities. After holding brainstorming sessions to identify the damage to the canals, the SWOT matrix based on weaknesses, strengths, opportunities and threats was completed and the root causes were analyzed using the fishbone method. The results of the SWOT method showed that the proposed strategies should be defined as conservative strategies in terms of strength from the perspective of internal factors with a score of 2.57 and threats from the perspective of external factors with a score of 2.49. On the other hand, the results of the risks of using the aqueduct are divided into two categories: potential risks of the aqueduct and effective external risks, and the results indicate the high importance of technological risks with an average score of 7.85, which is why conservative strategies based on risk conditions were defined. The results and strategies presented in this study can provide appropriate management approaches to the trustees for the optimal use of this water source.

Rainfall-runoff simulation is one of the most important challenges in the management of water resources in each basin, considering the climatic changes and the increase of extreme values in recent years, especially in different regions of Iran. In this study, the rainfall and runoff values in the statistical period of 1993-2019 were used regarding the rainfall-runoff simulation in the Qale Shahrokh sub-basin in the Zayandeh-Rood Dam basin. In this study, the Vine copula-based simulation approach was used to simulate and joint frequency analysis the flow discharge in Qale Shahrokh station given by the rainfall in Chelgerd, Meyheh and Marghmalek stations. By analyzing the tree sequence of vine copulas and using internal rotated copulas, D-vine copula was selected as the best copula based on the studied statistics. By using the best copula and the conditional relationship c(u4|u1,u2,u3), the flow discharge simulation was done given by rainfall of the upstream stations. The simulation results showed an error rate equal to 18.57 (m3/s) based on the RMSE statistic and the efficiency of the model was 86% based on the NSE statistic. The results of the simulation of flow discharge values given by rainfall in the upstream stations showed that the proposed approach has simulated the average of observed values with high accuracy. By considering the condition of rainfall occurrence in the frequency analysis of flow discharge in Qale Shahrokh station, the joint return period curve and the conditional probability of occurrence in this sub-basin were obtained. Using this curve, it is possible to estimate the flow discharge values of the studied station with high accuracy along with different return periods and different probability of occurrence. Considering the fact that the proposed method is based on the condition of rainfall in the region as well as the marginal distribution according to the data, it has no implementation limitations and is somehow specific to the studied region.

The lead-time and accuracy of the precipitation forecasts have a substantial influence on the flood forecast and warning systems. The application of Ensemble Precipitation Forecasts (EPFs) derived from numerical precipitation models has been developed due to their impact on increasing flood lead-time. This research aims to improve the skill of numerical precipitation models using post-processing techniques. In this regard, EPFs of three meteorological models, e.g., NCEP, UKMO, and KMA, were extracted for sex precipitation events leading to flood in the Dez river basin during 2013-2019. The statistical approaches and data-driven model were applied to post-process the EPFs. For this purpose, the raw forecast of every single model was corrected using linear and power regression models. Then, the corrected output of single models was combined using the proposed model of Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH). The results indicated that Power Regression Model (PRM) outperformed the linear models to correct raw forecasts. After correction of models' output, more accurate results were obtained by NCEP and UKMO models. Moreover, the Multi-Model Ensemble (MME) system constructed by the GMDH model (MME_GMDH) had a great effect on the skill of numerical precipitation models, so that the Nash–Sutcliffe and normalized error (NRMSE) efficiency criteria for MME_GMDH respectively were improved on average 23% and 11% in comparison with the PRM. A comparative assessment of the discrimination capability of MME with single ensemble models using ROC curve at the thresholds of 2.5 and 10 mm represented a higher discrimination ability by MME_GMDH for both thresholds. Post-processed EPFs exert as a reliable input to the hydrological models for extreme events forecast.