Skip to main content
ARS Home » Plains Area » Bushland, Texas » Conservation and Production Research Laboratory » Soil and Water Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #383543
Research Project: Precipitation and Irrigation Management to Optimize Profits from Crop Production

Location: Soil and Water Management Research

Title: Suitability of arid land rehabilitation technologies: simulation of water harvesting based solutions in Middle Eastern agro-pastures

Author
item SARCINELLA, MARGHERITA - Utrecht University
item STROHMEIER, STEFAN - International Centre For Agricultural Research In The Dry Areas (ICARDA)
item HADDAD, MIRA - International Centre For Agricultural Research In The Dry Areas (ICARDA)
item YAMAMOTO, SADAHIRO - Tottori University
item Evett, Steven - Steve
item STERK, GEERT - Utrecht University

Submitted to: Arabian Journal of Geosciences
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/5/2021
Publication Date: 3/5/2021
Citation: Sarcinella, M., Strohmeier, S., Haddad, M., Yamamoto, S., Evett, S.R., Sterk, G. 2021. Suitability of arid land rehabilitation technologies: simulation of water harvesting based solutions in Middle Eastern agro-pastures. 3rd Conference of Arabian Journal of Geosciences, November 2-5, 2020, Sousse, Tunisia. Article No. 345253442.

Interpretive Summary: Rangeland degradation related to overgrazing, fire, and climate change is a large problem in the western USA and other semi-arid parts of the world. In the U.S. alone, the annual cost is several billion dollars due to a 12% decrease in net primary productivity. Many methods of rehabilitation have been devised over the years but there exists no decision support system to guide managers as to where methods may be applied most effectively and productively. An international team of researchers, including USDA-ARS, addressed this problem by developing a simulation model to assess the likelihood of effective outcomes based on global datasets of weather, soils, vegetation and terrain. The model was successfully tested against water availability data from a rangeland watershed in Jordan but the approach is globally applicable, including to U.S. rangelands.

Technical Abstract: Efforts to enhance land productivity in agro-pastoral landscapes in the Middle East originate from antiquity. More recently, integrated watershed rehabilitation practices, combining mechanized micro water harvesting for forage shrub production and meso-scale flood water-based cereal agriculture, have been successfully tested at the local levels in Jordan. However, the erratic nature of rainfall exacerbated by climate change and the consequent perturbation of the local hydrological cycle, along with degradation of the fragile dryland-ecosystems, creates a complex environment. This poses considerable challenges in the out-scaling of already proven technologies from local to regional scales. A hydrological assessment based on modeling-cum-observation was conducted in Jordan to establish new linkages between plot and field-scale soil, water and vegetation processes in conjunction with spatially-explicit hydrological modeling. The aim was to bridge scales and unlock the potential of harmonized information to test the out-scalability of water harvesting methods applied locally. The concept is based on a likelihood approach integrating several environmental layers, such as top-soil, terrain and vegetation cover, with global surface hydrological simulations using global datasets. The goal is to develop and test a global harmonized approach for assessing the spatio-temporal surface water availability - as the driver of water harvesting-based rehabilitation and productivity enhancement measures.