Soroosh Sorooshian (PI)
University of California Irvine
soroosh@uci..edu

Impacts of Irrigation on Regional Climate and Hydrology Variability

Irrigation is the largest human hydrological activity. With the increasing demands for agricultural products and the application of advanced technologies, the irrigation acreage in the world is continuously expanding. This proposal intends to use combined high-resolution (~10 km) regional climate model (RCM) and hydrological model (HydM) to study the influences of irrigation on regional climate, hydrology, and water resource. Three representative, heavily irrigated regions: the central United Sates, the Central Valley, California, and the Northwest Mexico are selected for intensive study to expose the similarity and difference in the irrigation impacts. The PSU/NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5) and the National Weather Service Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (AHPS) system will be coupled to apply the irrigation model result for the hydrologic prediction. The major objectives of this proposal are to investigate the three basic questions,   (1) How does the large-area (>1,000 km2) irrigation (separate from other natural causes) affect the regional climate, atmosphere-land water cycle, and ecosystem in terms of temperature, precipitation, boundary layer, evapotranspiration, vegetation growth, soil water content and recharge? (2) Can (high-resolution) satellite remote sensing techniques be used to detect and monitor the atmospheric and land surface changes induced by irrigation? How can we make the satellite remote data quantitatively comparable to the model results? (3) How can we estimate the availability and sustainability of regional water resources considering the long-term impacts of irrigations?

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