title: Landscape irrigation management for maintaining an aquifer and economic returns.
abstract: Expanding irrigated agriculture and dryer climatic conditions has led to large-scale withdrawals of groundwater and the decline in shallow aquifers. Policy makers must wrestle with the challenge of maintaining economic growth while conserving the groundwater resource. A spatially explicit landscape level model analyzes consequences of optimally chosen crop mix patterns on an aquifer and economic returns. The model of the groundwater use incorporates irrigation needs of the crops grown, initial aquifer thickness, hydro-conductivity of the aquifer, and distance to surrounding grid cells. The economic model incorporates the site specific yield, crop mix, and irrigation practice investments to predict economic returns. A tradeoff occurs between the volume of the aquifer and economic returns due to groundwater withdrawal for irrigation, but the farm's ability to grow profitable lower irrigation crops dampens the intensity of this tradeoff. Allowing for multiple unconventional irrigation practices that are yield increasing and water conserving significantly increases the economic returns of a given crop mix while maintaining the aquifer.
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, 217 Agriculture Building, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, United States. Electronic address: kkovacs@uark.edu.
authors.forename: Kent Forrest
authors.initials: KF
authors.lastname: Kovacs
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, 217 Agriculture Building, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, United States. Electronic address: mcmancin@email.uark.edu.
authors.forename: Mattia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mancini
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, 217 Agriculture Building, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701, United States. Electronic address: gwest@uark.edu.
authors.forename: Grant
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: West
mesh_terms: D057914:Agricultural Irrigation; D001131:Arkansas; D002980:Climate; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics*; D060587:Groundwater; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D014881:Water Supply
keywords: Aquifer; Efficiency frontier; Irrigation technologies; Spatial-dynamic optimization