An analysis of the 2012 drought using a satellite data-driven hydro-economic model
Abstract
Agriculture in the intermountain western U.S. is characterized by extensive farming and ranching, low product diversification, and rainfed production systems, all of which makes the sector vulnerable to drought and climatic variability. Agriculture is a major component of the regional economy and of the livelihoods of people in states like Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Agricultural adaptation to increase the sector's resilience is of key strategic interest to mitigate the negative impacts of drought and of increasing climatological variability. Anticipating agricultural water demand, land reallocation, and impact s on farm revenues under alternative climate scenarios is critical to support the management of water and other natural resources. Information about the outcomes under these scenarios allows resource managers to design mitigation strategies and policy instruments that promote agricultural adaptation and a more efficient use of resources.
The 2012 drought that affected the U.S. Midwest and the southern half of Montana is an excellent case study to analyze how farmers adapt in the short term to drought conditions. Because the drought affected only certain portions of Montana, it created a natural experiment that allows us to evaluate how farmers in different areas of the state respond differently to climatic shocks. We use an integrated stochastic hydro-economic modeling and observation framework driven by satellite remote sensing to simulate the hydrologic and county-scale agroeconomic impacts of the 2012 drought. We use simulation results to identify the most vulnerable and resilient counties and evaluate the extent to which increasing access to surface water to compensate for precipitation shortfalls results in stream depletion. We also show how our satellite-based, remote-sensing driven modeling framework correctly captures land and water allocation and can be used to obtain insight into the spatially heterogeneous farmer decision making.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGC31C..05M
- Keywords:
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- 1616 Climate variability;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1807 Climate impacts;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES