Livelihood Vulnerability of Semi-Mobile Pastoral Communities to Climate Change in Arid and Semiarid of Iran

Climate change is impacting on natural resource based livelihood systems such as pastoralist communities in arid and semi-arid regions. Vulnerability to climate change refers to the potential of a system to be harmed by this external stress. The level of vulnerability of pastoral communities and the effective components determine the extent of climate change impacts on these communities and thereby help identify institutional options that have the potential to reduce their vulnerability. This study assessed climate change vulnerability of semi-mobile pastoralist communities in five main regions (Gozm, Kaht, Madan, Rochon and Jarob) of Khabr rangelands, Kerman, Iran using the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI). The data comprised of primary data on seven main components including socio-demographic profile, livelihood strategies, social networks, health, food, water availability, natural disasters and climate variability which were collected through survey of 70 semi-mobile pastoral households, and secondary data on rainfall and temperature. Data were aggregated using composite LVI index and vulnerabilities of communities were compared. Results suggested that semi-mobile pastoralists in Rochon region had the highest (0.63) LVI showing relatively the greatest vulnerability to climate change impacts in terms of Socio-Demographic Profile, Livelihood Strategies and Health while Kaht region had the least (0.49) LVI showing relatively the smallest vulnerability to climate change impacts. The results of this study are useful to access pastoralist communities’ vulnerability and set risk management policies. Keywords: climate change; livelihood vulnerability index ; semi-mobile pastoralist

A futuristic survey of the effects of LU/LC change on stream flow by CA–Markov model: a case of the Nekarood watershed, Iran

Land use (LU) or land cover (LC) is a critical factor dictating the amount of available water in runoff and groundwater. LU/LC Land use (LU) or land cover (LC) is a critical factor which can determine amount of available water in runoff and groundwater. In this study future effect of LU/LC change on stream flow in Nekarood watershed is investigated by Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). Land use maps (1986–2016) based on Landsat TM and ETM+ satellite imagery are used. Furthermore, land use projection is performed by CA-Markov for the future period of 2016–2030. According to the results, agriculture and residential land use are increased by 40%, 28%, 38% and 31% respectively, and forest area is reduced by 12% and 6% during 1986–2001 and 2001–2016, respectively. Moreover, land use projection results showed that from 2016 to 2030 forest area will decrease by 6%, residential areas and agricultural will increase by 34% and 19%, respectively

Assessment of Climate Change Effects on Shahcheraghi Reservoir Inflow

Introduction: Forecasting the inflow to the reservoir is important issues due to the limited water resources and the importance of optimal utilization of reservoirs to meet the need for drinking, industry and agriculture in future time periods. In the meantime, ignoring the effects of climate change on meteorological and hydrological parameters and water resources in long-term planning of water resources cause inaccuracy. It is essential to assess the impact of climate change on reservoir operation in arid regions. In this research, climate change impact on hydrological and meteorological variables of the Shahcheragh dam basin, in Semnan Province, was studied using an integrated model of climate change assessment. Materials and Methods: The case study area of this study was located in Damghan Township, Semnan Province, Iran. It is an arid zone. The case study area is a part of the Iran Central Desert. The basin is in 12 km north of the Damghan City and between 53° E to 54° 30’ E longitude and 36° N to 36° 30’ N latitude. The area of the basin is 1,373 km2 with average annual inflow around 17.9 MCM. Total actual evaporation and average annual rainfall are 1,986 mm and 137 mm, respectively. This case study is chosen to test proposed framework for assessment of climate change impact hydrological and meteorological variables of the basin. In the proposed model, LARS-WG and ANN sub-models (7 sub models with a combination of different inputs such as temperature, precipitation and also solar radiation) were used for downscaling daily outputs of CGCM3 model under 3 emission scenarios, A2, B1 and A1B and reservoir inflow simulation, respectively. LARS-WG was tested in 99% confidence level before using it as downscaling model and feed-forward neural network was used as raifall-runoff model. Moreover, the base period data (BPD), 1990-2008, were used for calibration. Finally, reservoir inflow was simulated for future period data (FPD) of 2015-2044 and compared to BPD. The best ANN sub-model has minimum Mean Absolute Relative Error (MARE) index (0.27 in test phases) and maximum correlation coefficient (ρ) (0.82 in test phases). Results and Discussion: The tested climate change scenarios revealed that climate change has more impact on rainfall and temperature than solar radiation. The utmost growth of monthly rainfall occurred in May under all the three tested climate change scenarios. But, rainfall under A1B scenario had the maximum growth (52%) whereas the most decrease occurred (–21.5%) during January under the A2 climate change scenario. Rainfall dropped over the period of June to October under the three tested climate change scenarios. Furthermore, in all three scenarios, the maximum temperature increased about 2.2 to 2.6°C in May but the lowest increase of temperature occurred in January under A2 and B1 scenarios as 0.3 and 0.5°C, respectively. The maximum temperature usually increased in all months compared to the baseline period. Minimum and maximum temperatures enlarged likewise in all months, with 2.05°C in September under A2 climate change scenario. Conversely, solar radiation change was comparatively low and the most decreases occurred in February under A1B and A2 climate change scenarios as –4.2% and –4.3% , respectively, and in August under the B1 scenario as –4.2%. The greatest increase of solar radiation occurs in April, November, and March by 3.1%, 3.2%, and 4.9% for A1B, A2, and B1 scenarios, respectively. The impact of climate change on rainfall and temperature can origin changes on reservoir inflow and need new strategies to adapt reservoir operation for change inflows. Therefore, first, reservoir inflow in future period (after climate change impact) should be anticipated for the adaptation of the reservoir. A Feed-Forward (FF) Multilayer-Perceptron (MLP) Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model was nominated for the seven tested ANN models based on minimization of error function. The selected model had 12 neurons in the hidden layer, and two delays. The comparison of forecasted flow hydrograph by selecting an ANN model and observed one proved that forecasted flow hydrograph can follow observed one closely. By comparison with the IHACRES model, this model displayed a 54% and 46% lower error functions for validation data. The selected model was used to forecast flow for the climate change scenarios of the future period. Conclusions: The results show a reduction of monthly flow in most months and annual flow in all studied scenarios. The following main points can be concluded: • By climate change, flow growths in dry years and it declines in wet and normal years. • The studied climate change scenarios showed that climate change has more impact on rainfall and temperature than solar radiation

Towards an integrated system modeling of water scarcity with projected changes in climate and socioeconomic conditions

Water scarcity is one of the major challenges in semi-arid and arid areas. Drivers for water scarcity include climate change, population growth, economic, and agricultural development. This paper presents a framework for assessing water scarcity under the impact of climate, industry, and socio-economic changes in the Qazvin Plain, Iran. A system dynamics model is developed and calibrated using historical data to evaluate the effects of the projected drivers on water scarcity in 2025–2054. A Bayesian averaging model was used to manage the uncertainty in the GFDL, INM, IPSL, MPI-ESM1-2, and MRI.MRI-ESM2-0 climate projections under the two future SSP126 and SSP585 (shared socioeconomic pathways) scenarios. The results demonstrate that the water scarcity index (with a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 1) is about 0.4 and 0.7 in SSP126 and SSP585, respectively, which may severely affect agricultural development. On the other hand, the industry, domestic, and service sectors are more resilient to these variations with no probable major effects on water scarcity. However, the stress on the agricultural sector may cause migration of the workforce to industry. Policymakers must focus on implementing appropriate adaptation strategies for the agricultural sector to prepare for unpredictable shocks to the system

http://www.agrimet.ir/article_69413_1f753aa38d785ddda126e4772b34e416.pdf

The aim of this research is to evaluate the temperature outputs of climate forecasting systems over Iran. The analysis is provided based on Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled General Circulation Models from North America Multi Model Ensemble (NMME). The skill of NMME individual models are evaluated in different initializations, of lead times (0-month, 1-month and 2-month) for October-December (OND), December-February (DJF), and February-April (FMA) target seasons. Temperatures at 2m from Climate Research Unit (CRU) dataset are used as reference observation over 1982-2010. Pearson correlation, Mean Error and Root Mean Squared Error are calculated as deterministic verification criteria for seasonal forecast verification. In addition, Relative Operating Characteristic (ROC) score is calculated as a categorical measure for below-normal and above-normal conditions. The results suggest that correlation between NMME forecasts and CRU is higher in FMA (compared to DJF and OND). CFSv2 has a significant skill in the south of Iran in FMA (correlation ≥ 0.9, ROC≥ 0.7). Spatial pattern of NMME biases is similar in three target seasons. GFDL-FLOR-B01 bias is lowest among all evaluated NMME models. At longer lead times; skill of some models is dropped for forecasting temperature in some river basins in Iran. Given large temperature biases found in NMME individual models, applying Model Output Statistics is recommended. Developing Multi-model Ensemble (MME) can also help to improve seasonal forecasts in Iran’s river basins for agriculture and water resources management applications

Changes of Some Indices of Low Flow affected by Climate Change in the Tang Panj Sezar Basin

Introduction: Due to the effects of climate change on water resources and hydrology, Changes in low flow as an important part of the water cycle, is of interest to researchers, water managers and users in various fields. Changes in characteristics of low flows affected by climate change may have important effects on various aspects of socioeconomic , environmental, water resources and governmental planning. There are several indices to assess the low flows. The used low flow indices in this research for assessing climate change impacts, is include the extracted indices from flow duration curve (Q70, Q90 and Q95), due to the importance of these indices in understanding and assessing the status of river flow in dry seasons that was investigated in Tang Panj Sezar basin in the west of Iran. Materials and methods: In this paper, the Tang Panj Sezar basin with an area of 9410 km2 was divided into 6 smaller sub catchments and the changes of low flow indices were studied in each of the sub catchments. In order to consider the effects of climate change on low flow, scenarios of temperature and precipitation using 10 atmospheric general circulation models (to investigate the uncertainty of GCMs) for both the baseline (1971-2000) and future (2011-2040) under A2 emission scenario was prepared. These scenarios, due to large spatial scale need to downscaling. Therefore, LARS-WG stochastic weather generator model was used. In order to consider the effects of climate change on low flows in the future, a hydrologic model is required to simulate daily flow for 2011-2040. The IHACRES rainfall-runoff model was used for this purpose . After simulation of daily flow using IHACRES, with two time series of daily flow for the observation and future period in each of the sub catchment, the low flow indices were compared. Results Discussion: According to results, across the whole year, the monthly temperature in the future period has increased while rainfall scenarios show different variations for different months, also within a month for different GCMs. Based on the results of low flow indices, in most cases, the three indices of Q70, Q90, and Q95 will show incremental changes in the future compared to the past. Also, the domain simulation by 10 GCMs for all three indices is maximum in Tang Panj Sezar and less for other sub catchments, which is related to better performance of IHACRES model in smaller sub catchments. In order to investigate the uncertainty of type changes in different indices in every sub catchment, changes in any of the indices were considered based on the median of GCMs. To achieve the correct type of changes in low flow indices, the amount of error in a simulation of the indices of IHACRES rainfall-runoff model should also be taken into consideration. Therefore, considering the error, the three indices Q70, Q90 and Q95 in all sub catchments (except for Tang Panj Sezar) will have the relative increase in the future period. The improvement of low flow state in the future period is related to the changes occurred in the state of climate scenarios. As the results indicated, most often, there is an increase in rainfall in dry seasons. Also, in different months of the wet season wet season, if the result of changes in quantity of rainfall is incremental, it can lead to an increase in river flow through groundwater recharge. On the other hand due to the limestone and karst forms in most of the basin area, water storage ability and increase the amount of river flow during low water season in this area is expected. The study on rainfall quantity in Tang Panj Sezar sub catchment also indicated that, there will be no significant increase or decrease in the quantity of rainfall in the dry season. Thus, it is expected that there will not be significant changes in low flow indices. In this sub catchment, changes in various low flow indices do not match perfectly, so more difficult to obtain reliable results. With regard to incremental changes of Q95, low flow index with less uncertainty, as well as improving indices of low flow in other sub-basins, it is possible to predict a relatively better state for low flow indices of Tang Panj Sezar in the future period. Conclusion: Using temperature and rainfall scenarios to simulate river flow in the future, a relative increase of all three low flow indices Q70, Q90 and Q95 was predicted compared with the past period. Although all three of mentioned indices show the amount of low flow in the dry season, it is recommended that only two indices of Q90 and Q95 to assess the effects of climate change be considered. Q90 and Q95 indices are more suitable indices than Q70 for studying the effects of climate change on low flow state. These two indices indicate less quantity of flow in dry seasons; therefore, the changes of the two indices are more important in identifying the low flow state. However, there is less uncertainty in the estimation of the two Q90 and Q95 indices than Q70

Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources in Zarrinehrud Basin Using SWAT Model

This paper evaluate impacts of climate change on temperature, rainfall and runoff in the future Using statistical model, LARS-WG, and conceptual hydrological model, SWAT. In order to the Zarrinehrud river basin, as the biggest catchment of the Lake Urmia basin was selected as a case study. At first, for the generation of future weather data in the basin, LARS-WG model was calibrated using meteorological data and then 14 models of AOGCM were applied and results of these models were downscaled using LARS-WG model in 6 synoptic stations for period of 2015 to 2030. SWAT model was used for evaluation of climate change impacts on runoff in the basin. In order to, the model was calibrated and validated using 6 gauging stations for period of 1987-2007 and the value of R2 was between 0.49 and 0.71 for calibration and between 0.54 and 0.77 for validation. Then by introducing average of downscaled results of AOGCM models to the SWAT, runoff changes of the basin were simulated during 2015-2030. Average of results of LARS-WG model indicated that the monthly mean of minimum and maximum temperatures will increase compared to the baseline period. Also monthly average of precipitation will decrease in spring season but will increase in summer and autumn. The results showed that in addition to the amount of precipitation, its pattern will change in the future period, too. The results of runoff simulation showed that the amount of inflow to the Zarrinehrud reservoir will reduce 28.4 percent compared to the baseline period