Basin assessment scenario intervention tool: Integrated groundwater surface water modeling and management for the Indus Basin

Indus basin as one of the top exporter of water-intensive crops (Dalin et al. 2017), with high population growth, is facing ground water over-exploitation and water shortage. Local stakeholder are eager to improve water sustainability outcomes and long range basin health that is critical for business, community and ecological sustainability. Here we developed a toolset that can be used by policy makers and stakeholders to assess the current watershed health in the Indus Basin and make tailored context based interventions for water management purposes. The toolset is composed of ArcGIS database, integrated surface-ground water modeling, watershed health assessments, scenario generating and projections, intervention recommendation and analyses. These five tools are used together for the first time to support water resource management. This toolset integrates the surface water and groundwater flow dynamics, capture the impacts of climate change, land cover change, and other human interventions to the hydrological system. The decision making process can be aimed by the following processes: 1) Identify objectives. (e.g., Optimize Pumping, Minimum Storage change...); 2) Establish intervention schemes. (e.g., Floodplain or wetland restoration, ASR, ABMPs: Irrigation scheme, crop structure alternatives…); 3) Scenario generation. Use historical data to generate scenario alternative based on intervention schemes; 4) Predictions. Rerun the validated model to predict future outcomes of interventions; 5) Supervision. Improve monitoring system to collecting data to supervise implemented interventions. Overall, this tool has significant practical value to local authorities and other parties facing similar sustainability challenges.