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Modelling the Impacts of Climate and Land Use Change on Water Security in
a Semi-arid Forested Watershed using InVEST

Alireza Daneshi, Roy Brouwer, Ali Najafinejad, Mostafa Panahi, Ardavan

Zarandian, Fatemeh Fadia Maghsood

PII: S0022-1694(20)31082-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125621
Reference: HYDROL 125621

To appear in: Journal of Hydrology

Received Date: 7 June 2020

Revised Date: 4 October 2020
Accepted Date: 5 October 2020

Please cite this article as: Daneshi, A., Brouwer, R., Najafinejad, A., Panahi, M., Zarandian, A., Fadia Maghsood,
F., Modelling the Impacts of Climate and Land Use Change on Water Security in a Semi-arid Forested
Watershed using InVEST, Journal of Hydrology (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125621

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 Modelling the Impacts of Climate and Land Use Change on Water

Security in a Semi-arid Forested Watershed using InVEST

Alireza Daneshi1, Roy Brouwer2,3, Ali Najafinejad1, Mostafa Panahi4, Ardavan

Zarandian5, Fatemeh Fadia Maghsood6
1 Department of Watershed Management Sciences and Engineering, Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences & Natural

Resources, Gorgan, Iran. Corresponding author: alirezadaneshi91@gmail.com.

2 Department of Economics and the Water Institute, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
3 Department of Environmental Economics, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
4 Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
5 Research Center for Environment and Sustainable Development, Tehran, Iran.
6 Department of Watershed Management and Engineering, College of Natural Resources, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran,

Iran & Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden.

Abstract

Water security, a key policy objective for sustainable development, is under stress as a result of land use and climate
change, especially in (semi-)arid areas like Iran. Land use change alters surface runoff and affects basin-wide
hydrological processes and water consumption, while climate change modifies precipitation and temperature patterns
and consequently evapotranspiration and water supply. In this study, water yield, supply and consumption are
simulated in a watershed draining into the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, using the water yield model in the Integrated
Valuation of Environmental Service and Tradeoffs (InVEST) tool. The novelty of this study is found in the combined
modelling of the impacts of climate and land use change scenarios on water security, translating these results into a
water stress indicator, and estimating the associated economic costs of reduced future water supply. The results show
substantial spatial variation of the negative impacts of water supply and future water security across the watershed,
further increasing the pressure on its inhabitants, their economic activities and ecological values. The estimation of
the economic costs of increased water insecurity allows us to inform policy and decision-makers about future
investments in climate adaptation and mitigation.

Key Words: Water Security, Climate Change, InVEST, Water Yield Model, Land Use Change, Water
Stress Index, Water Scarcity Costs

1
 1 Introduction

Water supply and water security are among the most important life support functions of our

planetary ecosystem that are strongly connected to local and regional social and economic

conditions ( Liquete et al., 2011; Jie et al., 2015; Lang et al., 2017, 2018). Water supply is a key

component in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem processes that produce water-related ecosystem

services, contributing to water availability for consumptive use and the maintenance of non-

consumptive in-stream environmental water flows (Vigerstol and Aukema, 2011). Water supply

is influenced by many factors, including socio-demographic trends, climate variability, economic

activities and alterations in land use, which impact the hydrologic system at local watershed, basin

and regional catchment scale (Legesse et al., 2003; Nelson et al., 2010; Polasky et al., 2011;

Wardrop et al., 2011; Lang et al., 2017).

Among these factors, the rapid change in land use coupled with climate change have greatly

influenced water-related ecosystem services (Mooney et al., 2009; Robards et al., 2011; Hoyer and

Chang, 2014; Song and Deng, 2017; Lyu et al., 2019). Climate change can affect water supply by

changing meteorological variables such as temperature and precipitation (Legesse et al., 2003;

Zahabiyoun et al., 2013). Land use change is primarily an anthropogenic disturbance that alters

surface runoff generation, changes water demand and supply, and affects hydrological watershed,

basin and catchment processes, including soil infiltration capacity, surface evapotranspiration, and

groundwater recharge and discharge (Wijesekara et al., 2011; Zhou et al., 2013; Song and Deng,

2017). Moreover, urbanized watersheds face increasing water stress due to growing demand from

population growth, water quality deterioration, lack of well-functioning infrastructure, and failing

water governance (e.g., Krueger et al., 2019; McDonald et al., 2014). Water stress may be difficult

2
to manage in these areas due to geographical and financial limitations and international aid and

investments may be needed to maintain adequate urban water supply (McDonald et al., 2014).

According to the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report (IPCC, 2014), our climate has warmed up

during the past half-century in almost every region across the world (Zhang et al., 2016). This

includes Iran, which is located in a (semi-)arid climate zone. Historical climate data and forecasts

of climatic conditions in Iran clearly show that the climate has changed in large parts of Iran in

recent decades and is expected to continue to do so in the future (Khalilian and Shahvari, 2018).

Over the past 50 years, Iran has furthermore been subject to more major land use changes than at

any time in its history (Bahrami et al., 2010). These land use changes, including deforestation,

urban sprawl, and the conversion of rangelands and rainfed agricultural lands into irrigated lands,

have in combination with rapid population growth affected the hydrological cycle and associated

water services (Ghaffari et al., 2010). Land use changes along with climate change have created a

serious water crisis in the country (Madani, 2014).

Studying the influence of climate variability and land use changes on water resources in

more detail is an essential step for sustainable water resources management and planning at local

and regional scale (Lyu et al., 2019). More specifically, the estimation of current and future water

supply can help policy and decision-makers and water managers to more effectively protect the

limited available water resources, and is paramount to the development of a sustainable water

management plan (Yang et al., 2019). There are many studies that either assess the impacts of

climate change on water availability (Abbaspour et al., 2009; Zahabiyoun et al., 2013; Rafiei

Emam et al., 2015; Huyen et al., 2017; Khalilian and Shahvari, 2018; Kishiwa et al., 2018; Ngoran

et al., 2018), or the impact of land use change on water (Ghaffari et al., 2010; Wijesekara et al.,

2011; Gao et al., 2017; Zarandian et al., 2017; Lang et al., 2018; Huang et al., 2019; Qi et al.,

3
2019). Also, some studies have looked at the effects of multi-scenarios combining climate change

and policy scenarios on water yield (Liu et al., 2017) or the effect of land use change scenarios on

both water supply and demand (Chen et al., 2020). However, integrated assessments of the impacts

of both land use and climate change on water resources, crucial for the development of sustainable

water resources adaptation and mitigation strategies, are rare (e.g. Fu et al., 2017; Lang et al., 2017;

Bai, Ochuodho, & Yang, 2019; Lyu et al., 2019), especially in Iran (Joorabian Shooshtari et al.,

2017).

We aim to fill this gap through environmental modelling of relevant land-water interactions,

applying the water yield model in the Integrated Valuation of Environmental Service and Tradeoffs

(InVEST) tool. The water yield model is used to assess current and future water supply and hence

water security conditions under different combinations of climate and land use change scenarios

in a case study in the Caspian Sea basin in northern Iran. The study’s main objective is to identify

the relative contribution of climate and land use change to future water supply restrictions and

water security in this water-stressed basin. In addition, the economic water scarcity costs

associated with future climate and land use change are estimated in this study. Droughts and

increasing water scarcity may have significant economic consequences (e.g. Damania, 2020;

Garcia-Hernandez and Brouwer, 2020). Integrated hydro-economic assessments can help to create

a better understanding of the combined impacts of climate and land use changes on water security

and the economy, and build contexts for dialogue between stakeholders, which in turn can lead to

adaptive management if consensus-building takes place (Volk, 2014).

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The next Section 2 first presents the case

study area. This is followed in Section 3 by a description of the methods and materials used in this

study. Section 3 is is divided in different parts, including an introduction to the InVEST water

4
yield model, the model’s data requirements, the model calibration and validation procedures, the

estimation of the water stress index, the associated costs and benefits of reduced water supply, and

the climate and land use change scenario’s used in this study. Section 4 presents the climate and

land use change scenario’s and Section 5 the main results. These results are discussed in more

detail in Section 6, while Section 7 concludes.

2 Study Area

Iran consists of 6 main river basins and the study area, the Narmab dam watershed (NDW), is part

of the Caspian Sea Basin in the north-eastern part of the country. Located in Golestan province,

between 37◦ 19՛ - 36◦ 75՛ N latitude and 55◦ 22՛ - 55◦ 67՛ E longitude, the NDW covers an area of

129 thousand ha’s and has an estimated population of close to 2 million people, of which more

than half (53.3%) live in urban areas. The watershed is the main source of drinking water for cities

located just outside the watershed at no more than 10-20 km distance. This includes Gonbad

Kavus, historically known as Hyrcania, the largest city in the region, with an estimated population

of around 152 thousand people, Azadshahr with 40 thousand people, Minudasht with a population

of approximately 26 thousand people, Galikesh with an estimated population of 20 thousand

people, and Ramian with about 12 thousand people. The NDW consists of 10 sub-watersheds fed

by three rivers: The Chehelchay watershed covers 23.5 thousand ha’s and 2 sub-watersheds, the

Narmab watershed 19.8 thousand ha’s and 3 sub-watersheds, and the Khormaloo watershed 85.8

5
thousand ha’s and 5 sub-watersheds (see

Fig. 5).

In the northern part of the case study area, the Narmab dam was recently completed. The

dam is a homogeneous embankment dam with a height of 60 m, a crest length of 807 m and a

reservoir volume of 115 million m3 (Bahrami BalfehTeimouri and Bagherzadeh, 2018). The

reservoir will be fed by all three rivers (the Narmab, Chehelchay and Khormaloo river) through

two diversion weirs. The reservoir will be used for irrigating approximately 25,000 ha’s of

agricultural lands downstream after construction of irrigation and drainage networks, and supply

water to the cities around the NDW, their subsidiary villages and local industry.

Fig. 1.
The NDW is located between 150 and 2,875 meters above sea level, and the main land uses

in the case study area are forest and rangeland. Average annual rainfall is 550 mm and the average

annual temperature is 17 ◦C. In terms of agriculture, the main crops grown in the region are wheat,

cotton, and potato. The region is part of the Hyrcanian Forest, a 850 km long belt of deciduous

forests along the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, on the northern slopes of the Alborz

6
mountains, including 1.85 million ha’s in Iran and 50,000 ha’s in the neighboring country of

Azerbaijan (Tohidifar et al., 2016). The area has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites

in 2019 and is listed by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as a Global 200 Ecoregion and by Birdlife

International as an Important Bird Area (Tohidifar et al., 2016). The Hyrcanian Forest contains

important natural habitats for the conservation of biological diversity, including nearly 60 mammal

species such as the Persian Leopard and 180 bird species (Tohidifar et al., 2016). In addition to its

key role for biodiversity conservation, the high precipitation, fertile soils, temperate climate and

landscape scenery, the Caspian Hyrcanian Forest supports many important ecosystem services.

These include watershed services such as drinking and irrigation water supply, sediment retention,

climate regulation, and tourism (Panahi et al., 2016).

However, the forest is under increasing pressure. The Hyrcanian Forest as a whole supplies

every year on average 1.1 million m3 of commercial timber, 2.7 million m3 of subsistence timber,

while an estimated 2.4 thousand m3 of wood is extracted every year illegally (Avatefi Hemmat,

2016). Animal husbandry is another important source of income for families living in the case

study area. Traditional husbandry systems also rely heavily on fuel wood from the forest to keep

livestock and stables warm, processing various dairy products, heating, cooking and repairing

stables and rural houses (Avatefi Hemmat, 2016).

7
 3 Methods and Materials

In this section, we first describe the structure of the water yield model in InVEST (section 3.1).

This is followed by a presentation of the model’s data requirements and the sources we used to

meet these data requirements (section 3.2), and the model’s calibration and validation (section

3.3). The translation of the outcome of the water yield model in a water stress index to assess

changes in local and regional water security is discussed in section 3.4 and the calculation

procedure for the associated economic costs in section 3.5.

3.1 The InVEST water yield model

Ecosystem services (ES) modeling tools allow the quantification, spatial mapping, and in some

cases economic valuation, of ES, as well as the analysis of impacts and trade-offs between

alternative ES management options (Grêt-Regamey et al., 2017). This improves our understanding

of the various relevant environmental, social and economic aspects involved and provides an

integrated analytical framework for sustainable natural resources management. The output from

these tools can also provide essential information to support integrated watershed management by

informing policymakers about the potential impacts of alternative land management options or

land use changes on one or multiple aquatic ES (Redhead et al., 2017). Assuming that these tools

are well-documented and tested, they can add credibility and trust to the decision process, and

increase stakeholder confidence in their use (Bagstad et al., 2013). The process of integrated hydro-

ecological-economic modeling can help to build a common understanding of environmental

complexities and inform policy dialogues, as it requires crucial input from a broad range of expert

and stakeholder groups (e.g. Volk, 2014). There exists a direct relationship between ES and human

well-being (Daily et al. 2009). In order to improve decision-making efficiency, a finer-scale

8
perspective on how ES are used and valued is required (Robinson et al., 2019). Whereas the main

focus used to be on the biophysical supply of ES, understanding the demand side and how

communities benefit from ES is crucial to integrated ES decision-making (Robinson et al., 2019;

Zoderer et al., 2019). Moreover, local communities can play a key role in the implementation of

adaptive strategies to reduce the negative impacts of climate and land use change (Baker et al.,

2012; Maghsood et al., 2019; Schönhart et al., 2018).

The quantitative assessment and spatial representation of water yield are increasingly seen

as a means of elucidating the interactions between people and water (Yang et al., 2019). Water

yield is defined here as the amount of water runoff from the landscape, and its relative volume

affects the quality of life for local residents (Gao et al., 2017). Hydrological modeling at catchment

scale has been used to investigate the impact of climate and land use change (Legesse et al., 2003).

To this end, a number of ES modeling tools have been developed in recent years, attempting to

link ecosystem structure and functioning to water resource goods and services (Dennedy-Frank et

al., 2016). Recent developments in such ES modeling have focused on water yield as a key

ecosystem service (Pascual et al., 2015). Among these models, InVEST is an open-source ArcGIS-

based ecosystem services mapping and valuation tool. The advantages of InVEST compared to

other, similar models have been summarized by different authors (Bagstad et al., 2013; Sharp et

al., 2018; Vigerstol and Aukema, 2011). It contains a large number of models in a single tool, each

of which focuses on quantifying and mapping a particular ecosystem service in biophysical units

that can be used as input for further spatial and socio-economic analysis. Using InVEST, each type

of ecosystem service can hence be evaluated and mapped separately. To this end, the tool makes

use of available land use maps and other spatial data to quantify ecosystem services that are

typically derived from field experiments, and converts this information into environmental

9
production functions. In this way, InVEST allows users to bridge the natural and social sciences,

while its ability to create scenarios adds to its usefulness to inform policy and decision-making by

explicitly showing synergies and trade-offs between different land use change interventions and

configurations that are easy to analyze in Arc GIS. Some models in InVEST have the ability to

directly evaluate the economic value of ecosystem services. The tool has furthermore been well-

documented and can be independently applied and tested and is therefore amenable to widespread

use.

The model InVEST has been applied all over the world for ES assessments, especially its

water yield model. In fact, the InVEST water yield model is one of the most commonly used

InVEST model components (Dennedy-Frank et al., 2016). Examples include the assessment of

freshwater ES in the Tualatin and Yamhill basins in the US under climate change and urbanization

(Hoyer and Chang, 2014), the spatial and temporal patterns of supply and demand of water supply

services in the Dongxiang lake basin in China (Jie et al., 2015), land use change impacts on water

yields in the karst mountain areas of China (Lang et al., 2018), soil erosion control and water yield

in the Pearl River Delta in China (Hu et al., 2019), water provision in monsoon catchments in

South-China (Yang et al., 2019), land use and climate change impacts on water-related ES in

Kentucky, USA (Bai et al., 2019), forest restoration efforts on water-related ES in China's Han

river basin (Qi et al., 2019), water-related ES in the context of the food-water-energy security

nexus in the Wabe river catchment of the Omo-Gibe basin in East Africa (Sahle et al., 2019), and

ES in protected areas in northern Iran (Zarandian et al., 2017).

This study also uses the InVEST water yield model (version 3.6.0) to evaluate the impacts

of climate and land use change scenarios in the NDW on water supply. Whereas water yield

reflects the annual average water volume that is yielded from a watershed, water supply refers to

10
the difference between the water yield from the watershed and the consumptive use of the water

in the watershed, for instance due to irrigation (Sharp et al., 2018). Water consumption measures

how much water is consumed each year across the watershed landscape. Hence, the model output

consists of these three components: water yield, water consumption, and water supply.

InVEST is a tool for exploring how changes in ecosystems are likely to lead to changes in

socio-economic benefits. InVEST usually employs a production function approach to quantifying

and valuing ES. Once such a production function is specified, the impact of changes on land or in

the water can be quantified in terms of changes in the level of ES provision (Sharp et al., 2018).

InVEST consists of a suite of spatial models that convert changes in land use patterns among others

into changes in crop production and water availability and supply. Combining maps of alternative

land use futures using InVEST, we can estimate the range of potential changes in ES provision

and tradeoffs among various services at different geographical and socioeconomic scales. These

predictions then help frame the discussion of preferred global change outcomes and policy

mechanisms needed to obtain them (Nelson et al., 2010).

The water yield model is based on a simple water balance where it is assumed that all water

in excess of evaporative losses arrive at the outlet of the watershed. The model is an annual average

time step simulation tool applied at the pixel level, but reported at the sub-watershed and watershed

level. The InVEST water yield model estimates the relative contributions of water from different

parts of a landscape, offering insight into how changes in land use patterns affect annual surface

water yield and hydropower production (Sharp et al., 2018). InVEST simplifies water movements

by combining the movement of groundwater and surface water, assuming that groundwater follows

the same flow path as surface water and reaches a stream where it is eventually discharged as base

flow (Bagstad et al., 2013).

11
 The water yield in each cell in the landscape is calculated as the annual amount of rainfall

that does not evaporate and is determined by the cell vegetation characteristics (Sahle et al., 2019).

The water yield model is based on the Budyko curve and annual average precipitation. Annual

water yield Y (x) for each pixel in the landscape x is determined as follows (Sharp et al., 2018):

Y(x) = 1 ―( AET(x)
P(x) ) ∙ P(x) (1)

where AET (𝑥) is the annual actual evapotranspiration for pixel x and 𝑃(𝑥) is the annual

precipitation in pixel 𝑥. For vegetated land use/land cover (LULC) types, the evapotranspiration
𝐴𝐸𝑇(𝑥)
portion of the water balance, 𝑃(𝑥) , is based on an expression of the Budyko curve proposed by

Zhang et al. (2004):

1
PET(x) ω
AET(x)
P(x) =1+
PET(x)
P(x) [ (
― 1+ P(x)) ] ω
(2)

where PET (𝑥) is the potential evapotranspiration and 𝜔(𝑥) is a parameter that characterizes the

natural climatic-soil properties, both detailed below. Potential evapotranspiration 𝑃𝐸𝑇(𝑥) is

defined as (Sharp et al., 2018):

PET(x) = kC(𝑙𝑥) ⋅ ET0(x) (3)

where 𝐸𝑇0 (𝑥) is the reference evapotranspiration in pixel 𝑥 and 𝐾𝑐(l𝑥) is the plant (vegetation)

evapotranspiration coefficient associated with the LULC 𝑙𝑥 in pixel 𝑥. 𝐸𝑇0 (𝑥) reflects local

climatic conditions, based on the evapotranspiration of a reference vegetation such as grass or

alfalfa grown at that location. 𝐾𝑐 (𝑙𝑥) is largely determined by the vegetation characteristics of the

land use/land cover found in that pixel (Allen et al., 1998). 𝐾𝑐 adjusts the 𝐸𝑇0 values to the crop

or vegetation type in each pixel of the land use/land cover map.

ω(x) can be calculated as displayed in equation (4) (Donohue et al., 2012):

AWC(x)
ω(x) = Z P(x) +1.25 (4)

12
 where Z is an empirical constant that captures the local precipitation pattern and hydro-geological

characteristics, with values typically ranging from 1 to 30pl. In this study, Z is calibrated using the

observed streamflow data which is compared with the modeled data. 𝑥 is the volumetric (mm)

plant available water content. The soil texture and effective rooting depth define 𝑥, which

establishes the amount of water that can be held and released in the soil for use by a plant. It is

estimated as the product of the plant available water capacity (PAWC) and the minimum of root

restricting layer depth and vegetation rooting depth (Sharp et al., 2018):

AWC(x) = Min (root restricting layer depth.vegetation root depth) ⋅ PAWC (5)

Root restricting layer depth is the soil depth at which root penetration is strongly inhibited

because of physical or chemical characteristics (Sharp et al., 2018). Vegetation rooting depth is

often given as the depth at which 95% of a vegetation type’s root biomass occurs.

3.2 Data requirements

The InVEST water yield model spatially maps the water yield per pixel by using current (2018)

and foreseen future (2036) land use and climate data. All spatial data required for the InVEST

water yield model were projected to the same coordinate system (WGS_1984_UTM_Zone_40N),

and the grid data were converted to a spatial resolution of 30×30 m in ArcGIS 10.3. The water

yield is calculated at this pixel scale and subsequently scaled up to sub-watershed and watershed

scale (Asadolahi et al., 2017). The specific data requirements in the InVEST water yield model

and their sources are described in more detail below.

Watershed delineation in polygons: The polygons for the 3 groups of 10 sub-watersheds in this

case study were extracted using Digital Elevation Method (DEM) data in grid format at a spatial

13
resolution of 30×30 m from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) (Qi et al., 2019), and

were calculated using Arc Hydro tools in ArcGIS 10.3 (Pascual et al., 2015).

Precipitation: The required climate data for the InVEST water yield model include precipitation

and reference evapotranspiration maps. To this end, we selected four meteorological stations in

and around the NDW. Information about precipitation, minimum, and maximum temperatures and

radiation was collected from the Iran Meteorological Organization database. To overcome the

effects of extreme values in a single year when identifying meteorological data corresponding to

the land use data for 2018, we averaged the meteorological data over a five-year period (2014-

2018) for the interpolation (Fu et al., 2017).

Reference evapotranspiration: For estimating the reference evapotranspiration (ET0), various

equations have been developed. The FAO Penman-Monteith method (FAO-PM) is generally

considered one of the best methods (Cai et al., 2007; Silva et al., 2013), but requires detailed input

data that is not always everywhere available, including in this study area. This data constraint led

to the development of simpler equations for calculating ET0. Given that some of these models

have been developed for specific areas, it is important to ensure that the model used for this study

area is appropriate and accurate. The results presented in Sheikh et al., (2013) were therefore used

to select the most appropriate method to calculate ET0 in this case study. They compared the

results coming out of the Hargreaves-Samani, Blaney-Criddel, Priestley-Taylor, Turc,

Thornthwaite, and Makkink models in a case study area that is very close and similar to our study

area. Their results show that the Hargreaves-Samani model (Droogers and Allen, 2002) generated

the highest degree of accuracy. This model was therefore also used in this study to estimate ET0:

ET0 = 0.0013 × 0.408 × RA × (Tav + 17) × (TD ― 0.0123P)0.76 (6)

14
where ET0 is the reference evapotranspiration given in mm/day, RA is the extra-terrestrial radiation

measured in MJ/(m2d), Tav is the average of the daily maximum and minimum temperature, TD

is the difference between the average daily maximum and minimum temperatures, and P is the

monthly precipitation. The spatial distribution of precipitation and reference evapotranspiration

was obtained by Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolation using a spatial resolution of

30×30 m in ArcGIS 10.3. The evapotranspiration coefficient 𝐾𝑐 for each land use class is used to

calculate the potential evapotranspiration by using plant physiological characteristics to modify

the reference evapotranspiration level, which is based on the crop alfalfa. The evapotranspiration

coefficient is in the range of 0 to 1.5 obtained for the different land uses on the basis of FAO

guidelines (Sharp et al., 2018).

Root restricting layer depth: We furthermore used the calculated root-restricting layer depths for

the different land uses in the case study area reported in Khormali and Ghorbani Nasrabadi, (2006).

This data was made available as a GIS raster with an average root-restricting layer depth value for

each cell. The PAWC is calculated using a soil’s AWC and root-restricting layer depth. This AWC

is based on the FAO’s Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD) (Narumalani et al., 2004; Qi et

al., 2019) and divided in our study by the soil depth to obtain the PAWC fraction throughout the

entire NDW (Zarandian et al., 2016).

Land use maps: Land use maps were created using images acquired from Landsat 7 ETM+

(Enhanced Thematic Mapper) in June 2000 and Landsat 8 OLI (Operational Land Imager) sensors

in June 2018 with a 30 m spatial resolution, to determine the area of any type of land use in the

NDW in the past as well as the current situation. Considering the objective of this study, we first

extracted land use data from past (2000) and current land use (2018) and then employ these maps

to predict future (2036) land use changes (see the section 5). The high-resolution sensors of

15
Landsat ETM+ and OLI are a valuable source of information (Cabral et al., 2018). These images

were downloaded from the U.S. Geological Survey website (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/).

Before classification, image pre-processing operations such as image restoration, geometric,

radiometric and atmospheric corrections were performed (Sahle et al., 2019). Satellite image

processing was conducted in ENVI 5.3.

In recent decades, several algorithms have been developed for classifying applications in

remote sensing. The selection of an appropriate classification algorithm therefore plays an

important role in producing reliable land use maps. Among the different available algorithms, the

Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) is considered one of the most accurate classification

procedures. It is a stable and robust pixel-based classifier with high precision and accuracy, and

the most widely used method in classifying remotely sensed data (Al-Ahmadi and Hames, 2009;

Sun et al., 2013). MLC is based on Bayes’ theorem, and makes use of a discriminant function to

assign a pixel to the class with the highest likelihood. A class mean vector and covariance matrix

are the key inputs to the function and can be estimated from the training pixels of a particular class

(Ahmad and Quegan, 2012). MLC is also used in this study to classify different land uses. The

classification of satellite images requires training samples for any land use class. These training

points are gathered by handheld GPS through field studies in 2018 and google earth software. The

historical imaginary option in google earth provided us with historical images for the years 2000

and 2018 on the basis of which we were able to select multiple points for different land use classes

for these two years. Since we did not have access to all parts of the case study area during the field

visits to record all points using GPS in 2018, we used google earth points to cover most parts of

each land use type to have an adequate number of spatially distributed points across the case study

area. Field points were selected randomly. Each GPS recorded points for each land use type was

16
transferred to Arc GIS and converted into polygons. The number of training points for each land

use type is shown in Table A in the Annex to this paper.

In order to estimate the accuracy of the classification results, 30% of the selected samples

were used for validation. This is a common procedure in the literature (e.g. Otukei and Blaschke,

2010; Ali et al., 2018; Cabral et al., 2018; Shaharum et al., 2018; Bihamta Toosi et al., 2019; Ge

et al., 2020). The classification accuracy was evaluated using a confusion matrix, on the basis of

which the overall classification accuracy and Kappa coefficient, two common measurements of

classification accuracy, were calculated (Kantakumar & Neelamsetti, 2015; Deng, Zhu, He, &

Tang, 2019; Reis et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2019). The classification accuracy is high, which may

be partly due to the use of training samples collected from the study area by GPS. The confusion

matrix that resulted from the MLC algorithm for 2000 and 2018 is presented in Table B in the

Annex to this paper.

Water consumption: Once the land use maps are created with the table of land use classes,

consumptive water use for each land use type is determined. Consumptive water use is that share

of the water that is incorporated into products or crops, directly consumed by humans or livestock,

or otherwise removed from the watershed water balance (Sharp et al., 2018). We use the values

for abstraction for agricultural purposes (assigned to the irrigated farmland class) and human and

livestock water consumption (assigned to the residential class) (Redhead et al., 2016). Most other

uses do not consume water, but return it to the watershed after use (Terrado, Acuna, Ennaanay,

Tallis, & Sabater, 2014).

For irrigated farmland, water consumption was calculated based on the specific cultivation

pattern and the water requirements of each crop. In 2018, 35% of the agricultural land consisted

of wheat, 20% of cotton, 15% of potato, 10% of rice, 10% of soybean and 10% of barley. All these

17
crops are irrigated by pressurized and gravity-driven irrigation methods. Average annual water

consumption under this cultivation pattern is 6,942 m3/ha (based on data provided by the Golestan

Regional Water Company over the past several years). This converts in the current land use map

to an average annual water consumption of 624.8 m3/pixel, and makes agriculture the largest water

consumer in the case study area.

Residential water use was calculated based on similar data from the Golestan Regional

Water Company (GRWC) related to both the total human and livestock population in the case

study area. Due to the lack of information at local level, the amount of water used per person was

taken from a national report on Strategic Planning and Supervision (Iran vice presidency for

strategic planning and supervision, 2013),which refers to an average daily water consumption per

person in rural Iran of 82.5 liters, and an average daily water consumption per cow and sheep of

50 and 12.5 liters, respectively. Based on current land use, population and livestock densities,

annual average water consumption in residential areas adds up to 220.7 m3/pixel.

3.3 Model calibration and validation

The model was calibrated using longer term average streamflow data. As a rule of thumb, a time-

period is used that allows capturing some degree of climate variability. Obviously, the climate data

(total precipitation and potential evapotranspiration) over this time-period should coincide with

the years of the land use map. Due to the availability of streamflow and discharge data for the

largest Khormaloo watershed, this watershed was chosen to calibrate the model. Only this

watershed has a discharge measurement station at the outlet. A similar five-year time-period of

discharge data as for the current climate maps (2014-2018) was used for the calibration. Over a

time-period of 5 years (2014-2018), the simulated water supply volumes (m3/year) based on the

water yield model has been fitted with the available discharge data by changing Z values between

18
1 and 30 as explained in Section 3.1. Water supply is the difference between water yield and water

consumption in the watershed, and is the water that flows out of the watershed. This is recorded

by the monitoring station at the outlet. As can be seen in Fig. 6, changes in Z have a considerable

impact on the simulated water supply and hence influence the fitting process with the available

(monitored) discharge data. Their difference is minimized at a Z value of 5.246. This Z value was

therefore used to run the model for the constructed future climate and land use change scenarios

that will be presented in the next section.

Fig. 2.
An important final step when using models to study hydrological variables is model validation and

assess how reliable the model is in predicting the values of the relevant hydrological variable, in

this case water supply. Model validation has tended to focus on the in-sample goodness-of-fit

properties of models (Power, 1993). The calibrated InVEST water yield model was validated using

precipitation and evapotranspiration data over the period 2011-2013 whilst maintaining the Z

parameter obtained from the calibration process over the period 2014-2018 (Pham et al., 2019).

The water supply amounts obtained from the model over this time period were compared with the

monitored water discharge amounts in the same period. The results show that the model was able

to predict 82.3% of the actual discharge amount correctly over this time period. Compared to the

actual water discharge amounts, the model underestimated the water supply amounts over that

period by 17.7%. Based on similar model validation outcomes in other studies (e.g. Li et al., 2018),

we conclude that the calibrated model can be used confidently to simulate the spatial and temporal

variation in water yield at the regional scale in this case study.

19
 3.4 Water stress index

In order to assess whether freshwater is a constraint for basic human needs and economic

development in the region, we make use of efforts over the past few decades to develop general

indices to quantify the relationship between water demand and water resources in a regional

context (e.g. Xu and Wu, 2017), such as the withdrawal-to-availability (WTA) or consumption-

to-availability (CTA) ratio. Most common is the Water Stress Index (WSI), which is commonly

defined as the ratio of total annual freshwater withdrawals to hydrological availability (Pfister,

Koehler and Hellweg, 2009). Using the results coming out of the water yield model across the

different scenarios, the WSI is derived in this case study by calculating the ratio of the volume of

water consumption to the amount of water yield in each sub-watershed. The resulting WSI ratios

are divided into five categories that indicate the level of water scarcity. A WSI from 0 to 0.1

indicates “no stress”, between 0.1 and 0.2 “low stress”, from 0.2 to 0.4 “mild stress”, from 0.4 to

0.8 “high stress”, and higher than 0.8 “severe stress” (Alcamo et al., 2000). Many if not most of

the research where the WSI or similar indices have been applied were conducted at a larger

(regional or global) scale than the watershed scale (e.g. Hofste et al., 2019; Procházka et al., 2018),

making it hard to compare these results directly with our findings at watershed and sub-watershed

scale. However, these studies consider Iran as a country with a moderate to high water risk,

conform our own findings at watershed scale.

3.5 The economic costs of water scarcity

The loss of water supply and the increase in water stress also has economic implications. Increasing

water scarcity will increase the economic value of water for the different water uses (Brouwer et

al., 2015). Theoretically, this increase in value can be estimated for each water use and group of

water users separately, for example through the inclusion of water as a production factor in

20
agricultural crop production or by asking residential households for their willingness to pay a

higher water bill to secure their water supply. In this particular case study, the economic value of

the predicted reduction of water supply is approximated using two different approaches. First, the

costs of water supply are calculated based on the estimated construction costs of the Narmab dam.

Secondly, the gross value added is estimated of irrigating the most important crops in the study

area instead of relying on rainfed agriculture.

4 Climate and Land Use Change Scenarios

In this study, five different future climate and land use change scenarios were created, separately

and in combination, to assess their impact on water supply and water security conditions in the

NDW: (1) climate change under the IPPC’s (2014) Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)

2.6 without any change in land use; (2) climate change under IPPC’s (2014) RCP 8.5 without any

change in land use; (3) land use change without any change in climate; (4) climate change under

RCP 2.6 and land use change; and (5) climate change under RCP 8.5 and land use change.

The climate change scenarios were derived from CanESM2 developed by the Canadian

Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis and downloaded from the fifth Coupled Model Inter-

comparison Project’s (CMIP5) General Circulation Models (GCM) data archive (https://esgf-

node.llnl.gov/search/cmip5/). The climate scenarios include precipitation, minimum and

maximum temperature for the period 1961-2001 and predictions for the near future (2020-2040)

under the two RCPs, with a surface grid spatial resolution of 2.8°× 2.8°. The Long Ashton Research

Stochastic Weather Generator (LARS-WG) was applied to downscale the GCM results, and

generate future time series of precipitation and maximum and minimum temperatures based on

21
historical changes in precipitation and temperatures as follows (Vaighan et al., 2017; Maghsood

et al., 2019):
PGCM.fut. i
ΔPi = PGCM.his. i (7)

ΔTmaxi = TmaxGCM.fut. i ― TmaxGCM.his. i (8)

ΔTmini = TminGCM.fut. i ― TminGCM.his. i (9)

where, ΔP𝐢, ΔT𝐦𝐚𝐱𝐢, and ΔTmini are the changes of precipitation, maximum and minimum

temperatures for the ith month (Jan-Dec). TmaxGCM.fut. i and TmaxGCM.his.i are the long-term averages

of the ith month for the maximum temperature for the future and historical period, respectively.

Similarly, 𝑃GCM.fut. i and PGCM.his.i are the long-term averages of the ith month for precipitation in

the future and historical period, respectively. As for the current situation, the modified Hargreaves

method in equation (6) was used to estimate the average annual evapotranspiration. Average values

of climate data obtained from the CanESM2 model were for a five-year time-period (2032-2036).

To prepare the future land use map for the next 18 years (i.e. until the year 2036), based on

the available land use maps for the years 2000 and 2018, the InVEST Scenario Generator was

used. This tool provides a relatively simple method of generating scenarios based on land use

suitability. It works on the principle that changes in land occur in areas that are relatively more

suitable for specific use. The InVEST Scenario Generator creates maps that depict future land

cover by combining expert judgment and stakeholder opinions of transition likelihood values with

physical factors that determine suitability (Sharp et al., 2018). Input data include a baseline land

use map, a constraints layer (e.g. to identify if there are any protected areas), the quantities of land

use changes, a land use transition table, a priority matrix, and land suitability factors such as slope,

elevation and roads (Zarandian et al., 2017).

22
 The 2018 land use map was used as the baseline. The boundary of the national protected

area in the southwestern part of the case study area, the Khosh Yaylaq Wildlife Refuge (almost 35

thousand ha) managed by the Iranian Department of Environment since 1978, is used as a

constraint layer to prevent land conversion inside the protected area. In order to predict the foreseen

land use changes over the period 2018-2036 and create the land use map for 2036, we used the

information about the changes in land use between 2000 and 2018. A land suitability factor table,

with values between 0 (unsuitable) and 1 (extremely suitable) was made to determine the

suitability of the land use changes. Land elevation levels and distances to roads were, for example,

considered determining factors in relation to farmland conversion with weights of 0.9 and 0.2,

respectively. Elevation is a determining factor for development of residential land and was

therefore given a weight of 0.8 for this land use type.

The land use transition table and priority matrix were completed using expert and

stakeholder opinions. The land use transition table contains land use transition likelihoods on a

scale of 0 to 10, where 0 indicates no likelihood of change and 10 reflects full likelihood of change

for a specific land use. The priority matrix of land uses is created using multi-criteria analysis

(MCA), applying pairwise comparison based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (Saaty, 1977).

The MCA was informed by a survey sent out to 30 experts and stakeholders, which included

questions directly related to the land use transition table and priority matrix. Key stakeholders were

identified in the study region who were believed to have the ability to complete the survey. This

included representatives from the regional water company GRWC and Ministry of Agriculture,

and decision-makers responsible for the local and regional planning and implementation of natural

resource protection programs from the Department of Natural Resources of Golestan Province. In

addition, a number of key experts were identified in the departments of Watershed Management,

23
Rangeland Management, and Environmental Sciences in the Gorgan University of Agricultural

Sciences and Natural Resources. The survey was completed by 17 stakeholders and experts

(response rate of 57%) and generated the values needed as inputs in the InVEST Scenario

Generator for the land use transition table and priority matrix.

5 Results

5.1 Land use change

Land use maps for 2000 and 2018 were extracted using the MLC algorithm to identify different

land use classes, including (semi-)dense forest, (semi-)dense rangeland, rainfed and irrigated

farmland, built residential area, and road infrastructure in the study area (Table 1 and Fig.3). The

results show that the overall accuracy is 93.6% for the 2000 classification and 90.1% for the year

2018. Similarly, the Kappa coefficient is 0.89 and 0.85 for the 2000 and 2018 classifications,

respectively, indicating that the classification accuracies are consistently high.

Table 1.

To create the map with future land use in 2036, the InVEST Scenario Generator identified

both changes in land use and the size of each land use. In the 2036 land use map, in addition to the

existing nine land uses, the dam reservoir was added as another land use element. The dam is under

construction and expected to be operational in 2020. Another important observation is that the

protected area remains in place, as indicated by the thick black line in the bottom part of Fig.3.

Land use has somewhat changed in the protected area between 2000 and 2018, but this has come

to a stop by 2036 as a result of stricter compliance of restricted land use change with the law.

Fig.3.

24
 The results in Table 1 show that from 2000 to 2018, a significant share of the dense and

semi-dense forest was cut and changed into (rainfed and irrigated) farmland. Also the share of

(semi-dense) rangeland for grazing livestock increased by almost 4%. The share of residential area

increased very little, while there was no additional road building in the case study area. The results

of the Scenario Generator predict that the semi-dense and dense forest land will continue to be cut

at the same pace as in the past until and including 2036 by 0.5% per year. The area of agricultural

land is expected to continue to grow gradually by 0.3% per year, and the area of (semi-) dense

rangeland by 0.2% per year. This is expected to have a significant impact on water availability and

consumption in the case study area as we will show in the next sections.

5.2 Climate change

The spatial distribution of the average annual precipitation and reference evapotranspiration in the

current period and their projections into the near future under the RCP 2.6 and 8.5 climate change

scenarios is presented in Fig.4. There is a clear spatial pattern from south to north. Precipitation is

lowest in the south and highest in the north, and the reverse applies to the reference

evapotranspiration. The Hyrcanian Forest found in the northern part of the case study area is

located in close proximity to the Caspian Sea, which causes higher levels of humidity and

precipitation. Therefore, from north to south, the amount of plant cover is reduced and the air

becomes warmer since the southern part of the area is closer to the central desert areas of Iran that

have a warmer and drier climate. This is also the reason why the concentration of residential areas

is reduced from north to south, resulting in higher pressure on water resources in the northern part

than in the southern part, and why the Narmab dam is being built.

Fig.4.

25
 Due to the increase in population density in areas close to the forest, the destruction of

forests is expected to continue into the future. Given the climate regulating role of vegetation

cover, the degradation of this land cover affects precipitation and evapotranspiration. The changes

from high to low vegetation cover as depicted in the land use change scenario in the previous

section is expected to result in decreased evapotranspiration and increasing water yield (e.g.

Lopez-Moreno et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2015; Fu et al., 2017; Gao et al., 2017).

The range of annual precipitation in the current situation is 262 to 1,016 mm with an annual

average of 549 mm. Under the RCP 2.6 scenario, the precipitation range changes slightly from 255

to 947 mm with a lower annual average of 539 mm. The impact of the RCP 8.5 scenario is more

severe, resulting in a lower range of annual precipitation from 247 to 761 mm and a 14.4% decrease

in annual average precipitation to 470 mm. Average annual reference evapotranspiration is

currently 852 millimeters (ranging from 718 mm in the south to 1,036 in the north). This changes

to an average reference evapotranspiration of 901 mm under the RCP 2.6 scenario (range 802-

1,039 mm) and 916 mm (range 818-1,057 mm) under the RCP 8.5 scenario.

5.3 Impact of climate and land use change on water yield and water security

Based on the results presented in the previous two sections, the impacts on water yield and water

consumption can be estimated. Their difference gives us the water supply, which is subsequently

used to evaluate the impacts of the climate and land use change scenarios on water stress and water

security conditions in the case study area. The water yield estimations are presented in Fig.5 in

cubic meters per pixel, while the changes in water yield, water consumption and water supply are

summarized in Fig. 6. As before, a clear increasing spatial trend in water yield can be detected

when going from south to north, mainly due to the increase in precipitation. Scenarios 3-5 display

26
the new dam reservoir in the upper northern part of the case study area. Finally, Fig.7 shows how

the change in water supply affects water stress in the case study area.

Without climate change, the impacts of land use change only have a moderate effect on

water yield (Fig. 5). Mean water yield goes up slightly by 3% to 128 m3/pixel compared to 125

m3/pixel in the current situation (ranging from 0 to 603 m3/pixel). The impacts of climate change

are more noticeable. Under the RCP 2.6 scenario, the average water yield decreases by almost 10%

to 114 m3/pixel (ranging from 0 to 551 m3/pixel), while the decline is most dramatic under the

RCP 8.5 scenario, when the average water yield in the case study area in the year 2036 is expected

to be no more than 70 m3/pixel (ranging from 0 to 422 m3/pixel). This is equivalent to a reduction

of almost 45% compared to the current situation in 2018. Combining climate and land use change

in scenarios 4 and 5 results in slightly less dramatic reductions in average water yield of 117 and

72 m3/pixel, respectively. In the latter case, the negative effect of the RCP 8.5 scenario over the

more positive land use change scenario is clearly noticeable.

Fig.5.

Future land use change has a relatively minor impact on water yield, primarily through

vegetation cover evapotranspiration, but is the most important driver behind future water

consumption levels (see Table C in the Annex to this paper). Increasing human use of the land in

the case study area by converting it into agricultural cropland and rangeland for grazing livestock

means that the demand for water increases substantially. For this reason, water consumption

remains the same under the first two climate scenario’s (scenario 1 and 2), while water

consumption almost doubles in the next 18 years under the next three scenarios that include the

foreseen land use changes (scenario 3-5). The largest water consumers are found in sub-watersheds

5 and 8 along the western border of the case study area. This is also shown in Fig. 6. Together with

27
sub-watersheds 9 and 10, sub-watershed 8 has the lowest water yield under most of the scenarios,

largely because of the future increase in agricultural and residential land use. Also sub-watershed

5 is among the more water deprived watersheds, often following sub-watershed 8 in ranking with

respect to lowest water yield.

Given that water supply is the difference between water yield and consumption, its annual

volume will decrease when the volume of annual water yield decreases and/or the volume of

annual water consumption increases. The results in Table C in the Annex show that water supply

decreases under all five scenarios, with the largest reductions under scenario 5 (64%) and scenario

2 (51%). The reductions under scenarios 1 and 3 are around 11%, and under scenario 4 double of

that, namely 22%. Under scenario 5, 3 of the 10 sub-watersheds (30%) are predicted to experience

negative water supply (watersheds 5, 8 and 9). These sub-watersheds are among the most water

deprived watersheds in terms of water yield, while sub-watersheds 5 and 8 are shown to have the

highest water consumption levels in the future due to land use change in Table B. Sub-watershed

9 also has a negative water supply under the most severe climate change scenario 2. This means

that if these scenarios occur, these sub-watersheds will not be able to supply the water needed for

residential and agricultural uses, and put them under severe water stress.

Fig.6.

Fig. 7 and Table D in the Annex show the WSI for every sub-watershed under current

conditions and under the 5 future climate and land use change scenarios. In the current situation

most sub-watersheds are under no or low water stress. Only the two south-eastern sub-watersheds

9 and 10 are characterized as having a high stress level, which includes a large part of the protected

area, due to the lack of precipitation and high evapotranspiration. Under scenario 1 (RCP 2.6),

where we only account for climate change, the situation remains more or less the same, with sub-

28
watershed 3 in the north having slightly less water stress than in the current situation, and sub-

watershed 7 along the western border of the case study area increasing its water stress levels a little

bit to low stress. Under the RCP 8.5 climate change scenario (scenario 2), water stress levels

increase in sub-watersheds 5 to 10, where sub-watersheds 9 and 10 reach critical stress levels.

Under this scenario, sub-watershed 9 will not meet its water needs.

Under land use change scenario 3, water stress levels increase especially in sub-watersheds

5 and 8, where we see the highest increase in irrigated farmlands, while sub-watersheds 9 and 10

remain under high stress. Note that the water stress index for the different sub-watersheds is the

same under scenarios 3 and 4. As shown and discussed before, stress levels become more critical

in most sub-watersheds under scenario 5 (with the exception of sub-watersheds 1, 2 and 4), when

30% of the sub-watersheds are unable to meet water demand, not only in the south, but also in the

north and north-eastern part and towards the central part of the case study area. Under this scenario,

more than half of the case study area is under severe stress.

Fig.7.

5.4 Economic costs of water scarcity

The total investment and running costs of the Narmab dam to secure future water supply have been

estimated at 8,500 Iranian Rials per m3 in 2018 prices (GRWC, 2012). This is equivalent to

US$0.22/m3.1 Hence, the 22 dollar cents per cubic meter represent the costs of supplying enough

1 Historical exchange rates for Iranian Rials (IRR) were obtained from XE online (xe.com). 1 US dollar equaled

0.000028 IRR on the 1st of January 2018 and 0.000024 IRR on the 30th of December 2018. The midpoint of this range

was taken for the conversion here. Purchasing power parities from the World Bank are only available until 2017 and

are expressed in international dollars and were therefore not used here.

29
water for the social and economic activities in the case study area to continue into the future until

and including 2036. Assuming that this is the real unit value of water that would stay constant over

time between 2018 and 2036, we are able to roughly estimate the annual economic cost of the

reduction in water supply (see Table 2). The assumption is furthermore that the different water

users in the case study area will be charged this amount as an increase in their current water fee

and they are willing to pay for this cost of water provision.

Besides data from the GRWC, data were also collected from the Iranian Ministry of

Agriculture to compare the productivity of irrigated and rainfed agriculture (Ahmadi et al, 2018).

Wheat is among the most important crops in the study area, both in rainfed and irrigated

agriculture, with cultivated area shares of 60% and 35%, respectively. Cotton, barley and mung

beans follow with shares of 15%, 10% and 5% respectively on irrigated land. The productivity of

cultivating these crops in 2018 on irrigated farmland was on average approximately a factor 2

higher than on rainfed farmland. Assuming that also irrigated crop productivity remains constant

over the next 18 years, these productivity differentials (measured in kg/ha) are multiplied by the

average market price of the crops in the year 2018 (measured in US$/kg). These economic values

are subsequently divided by the average amount of irrigation water needed to grow these crops

(measured in m3/ha) in order to obtain the gross value added of irrigation water for each of these

crops (measured in US$/m3). The average gross value added across all 4 crops (wheat, cotton,

barley and mung beans) is then calculated by using the shares of the irrigated areas as weights.

This generates a weighted average for the value added of irrigation water of US $0.23/m3.

The calculation procedure is shown in Table E in the Annex to this paper and yields more

or less the same value as the one derived from the GRWC. The interpretation is different though,

namely that this would be the estimated loss of gross valued added of irrigation water as a result

30
of the overall reduction in water supply under the presented climate and land use change scenarios.

An important assumption is that the marginal supply costs of irrigation water are negligible (these

would have to be subtracted from the gross valued added to get the net value added), and that the

shares of the irrigated crop areas and the average market prices for these crops remain constant

over time. Note also that if farmers would be charged the water supply cost of US $0.22/m3 to

irrigate their lands, the net value added of cultivating irrigated crops would be US $0.01/m3. Using

this value of 1 US dollar cent per cubic meter instead of US $0.22/m3 would reduce the economic

costs of limited water supply in Table 2 substantially.

Since we are interested here in estimating the economic costs across all water users,

including residential and industrial water demand in the cities surrounding the case study area, we

apply the value of US $0.22/m3 in the analysis presented here as the costs of dam construction to

substitute for the loss of future water supply across all water uses and users. There may be

important differences in water scarcity costs among the different water users, but that we lack the

data and information to verify this, except for agricultural water use. The aggregated economic

costs of water scarcity are presented in Table 2 in 2018 US dollars, where the difference in water

supply under the climate and land use change scenarios (in m3 per year) is simply multiplied by

US $0.22/m3.

Table 2.

As expected, the economic costs are highest under scenarios 2 and 5, based on RCP 8.5,

when water stress and water scarcity levels are highest. The total economic costs under these two

scenarios are close to 16 and 20 million US dollars per year, respectively. The total economic costs

under the other scenarios are orders of magnitude lower, varying from US$3.2 to US$6.9 million

annually. Each sub-watershed suffers economic costs under these two scenarios since they all face

31
a reduction in water supply. Under scenarios 1, 3 and 4, a limited number of sub-watersheds

(mainly sub-watersheds 1, 2 and 3) show an increase in water supply. As can be seen from Fig. 7,

sub-watersheds 1 and 2 have no water stress levels, irrespective of the scenario. Sub-watershed 3’s

water stress level improves slightly under scenario 1, and stays the same or deteriorates under the

other 4 scenarios. Sub-watershed 7 bears the highest share of the economic costs under scenarios

1 and 5 (29% and 18%, respectively), while sub-watershed 5 has the highest relative costs under

scenario 3 (38%). Under most scenarios, the sub-watersheds 5 to 8 situated in the western part of

the case study area account for more than 50% of the total economic costs. The share of the

economic costs in the currently already most water stressed sub-watersheds 9 and 10, which fall

largely in the drier protected area in the south-eastern-part of the case study area, is generally

speaking relatively low (7% on average across all 5 scenarios), varying from 4% under scenario 3

to 27% under scenario 1.

6 Discussion

Overall, the results show that water yield is negatively affected by both climate change

scenarios in the case study area in Iran. On the contrary, land use change has a small positive

impact on water yield, but a stronger negative impact on water consumption, and hence water

supply and consequently water stress. Combined, the positive effect of land use change is offset

by the negative impacts of climate change on the available water resources in the region. These

results are comparable with the results presented in other studies applying InVEST, such as Gao

et al. (2017) and Qi et al. (2019), who find a positive impact of land use change, as well as Fu et

al. (2017) and Lang et al. (2017), who similarly find a positive effect of land use change and a

negative impact of climate change on water yield, but only compare one year in the past with the

present. They do not use future scenarios of climate and land use change like we do in this study.

32
Similar results but based on other hydrological models include Wang et al. (2015), Shadkam et al,

(2016), Zhu et al, (2016), Abera et al. (2019) and Zhang et al. (2019). They all illustrate the

negative impact of climate change and the positive impact of land use change on water yield,

primarily through reduced evapotranspiration of reduced vegetation cover (e.g. as a result of

deforestation). The results of this study are also compatible with the results presented in Zarandian

et al. (2017), who show that land use change affects water yield positively and water consumption

and hence water supply negatively in a protected forest area in two adjacent provinces in northern

Iran.

The climate change scenarios applied in this study showed that the main reduction in

available water is due to the negative impact of climate change on precipitation patterns.

Temperature plays much less of a role. The reduction in precipitation results in a decrease in water

yield which directly reduces water supply. This effect is reinforced by the foreseen intensification

of land use, in particular the increase in irrigated farmland and built residential areas. The latter

two land use changes directly reduce water supply through increasing water consumption. The

combined effect of climate and land use change in scenarios 4 and 5 has severe consequences for

the study area’s future water security. This combined effect is largely cumulative in this study.

It is important to point out that climate and land use change may interact and have important

feedback loops (e.g. He et al., 2015). Possible interaction effects between climate change and land

use change, for example an increase in irrigation water demand because of the fact that the climate

gets warmer and drier, are limited in this study area for a number of reasons. First of all, climate

change in the case study area has, as said, primarily resulted in a further reduction of rainfall. Its

role in raising temperatures and hence increasing evapotranspiration is expected to be much less.

A review of temperature data over the past decades also confirms that no large temperature changes

33
have been observed in the region and that the average temperature rise has been small over the

long term. In fact, what has made climate change more tangible in the study area is the declining

rainfall that has occurred in recent decades, and this trend is continued in the forecast presented in

this study. Secondly, based on data from the Provincial Ministry of Agriculture, it can be observed

that the pattern of water use for crops has been largely stable over the last two decades due to the

fact that irrigation takes place at times of the year when the air temperature is still low. Most crops

are harvested before the warm or hot season. It is therefore considered unlikely that by 2036 there

will be a major change in the pattern of water consumption. This may, however, not be the case in

other (semi-)arid regions around the world, where accounting for this interaction effect may

worsen future water security conditions even further. Hence, how this interaction between climate

and land use change works out more specifically deserves further investigation in future research

in other parts of the world.

Uncertainties surrounding future climate and land use changes are passed on to their

impacts in terms of changes in (the spatial and temporal variation of) precipitation and

temperatures. In the context of the applied modelling framework in this study this occurs through

various mechanisms, most importantly the empirical constant Z and Kc coefficient. The Z value

captures the watershed-wide characteristics of climate seasonality, rainfall intensity, and

topography that are not described by the plant-available water content and annual level of

precipitation. An increase in this value decreases water supply and hence increases water stress.

Despite the sensitivity analysis on the Z parameter in the largest watershed for which data was

available, the value of the Z parameter remains uncertain in the other watersheds and therefore

requires further investigation, especially in view of the fact that the sensitivity analysis showed a

34
considerable impact of varying Z-values on the simulated water supply compared to actually

observed water supply.

The plant evapotranspiration coefficient Kc for each land use class, used to calculate

potential evapotranspiration by using plant physiological characteristics to modify the reference

evapotranspiration, is based in this study on one agricultural crop only, and also requires more

investigation. The uncertainties related to this value are large because it was difficult to provide

accurate estimates of the actual evapotranspiration from different types of land cover and uses,

especially forest. The Kc coefficient reflects the role of vegetation in the conversion of reference

evapotranspiration to actual evapotranspiration. By influencing actual evapotranspiration

simulated by the model, the coefficient affects the annual water yield. As the coefficient increases,

the actual amount of evapotranspiration increases, and hence the water yield within the watershed

decreases, and vice versa. The coefficient has a direct effect on the results of the climate change

scenarios and an indirect effect on the impacts of the land use change scenario. As the reference

evapotranspiration increases in the future, under the influence of this coefficient actual

evapotranspiration will increase by the same amount. Equally important, if under the land use

change scenario the area that has a high coefficient value increases, the annual water yield in the

watershed will go down.

Although common in previous studies (e.g., Alam, 2018; Hua et al., 2015; Vaighan et al.,

2017), it is important to note that only one of the many different general circulation climate (GCM)

models was used in this study (CanESM2). The greatest source of uncertainty in hydrological

projections is typically found in the wide range of climate projections generated by GCMs. The

performance of these models may vary across study areas (Rupp et al., 2013), and multiple climate

models are often used to provide a more comprehensive picture to guide climate change mitigation

35
(Hoyer and Chang, 2014; Huang et al., 2019). Similarly, only one pathway for the future land use

change scenario was introduced, and here too future research will need to assess in an extended

scenario analysis, as for example in Zhang et al. (2017), how future anthropogenic activities will

alter the landscape and affect the robustness of the results presented in this study.

The limitations imposed by the InVEST water yield model to model dynamic hydrological

processes constitute an important caveat of this study. This simple water balance tool was applied

because of the limited available data and information for the case study area. Much more detailed

hydrological and ecological field data would be needed to be able to describe underlying eco-

hydrological processes at sub-watershed level, as for example is the case in the Soil and Water

Assessment Tool (SWAT) and its hydrological response units. The water yield model served its

purpose well in this study, where we primarily aimed to assess the combined impact of climate

and land use changes on annual surface water yield and water supply, and inform policy and

decision-makers about their expected future impacts on regional water security. However, future

research will need to open up the black box underlying the model tool and obtain better insight

into important underlying dynamic eco-hydrological processes influencing stream flows. The scale

of analysis would in that case also have to be revisited given the currently coarse scale of the

applied Budyko framework, the available meteorological data at watershed scale and the need to

downscale this to sub-watershed level to capture not only the relevant hydrological processes in

more detail, but also the most likely more heterogeneous precipitation and evapotranspiration

patterns at sub-basin scale.

Another caveat of this study is the limited attention paid to the role of forests in the northern

part of the case study area in water flow adjustment, water storage, and the preservation of water

quality. For example, water runoff is expected to increase as a result of deforestation under

36
scenario 3, especially in the northern parts of the study area (Zarandian et al., 2017). The

importance of protecting the forest in these areas to supply different aquatic ecosystem services as

synthesized for example in Ovando and Brouwer (2019) is therefore somewhat underexposed in

this study. At the same time, continued unsustainable deforestation as witnessed over the past

decades and the release of CO2 stocks is expected to affect the climate in the region that was

possibly not captured in the RCP 2.6 and 8.5 climate scenarios.

Finally, it is important to note that if water supply increases, this can increase the risk of

flooding. Although this study focused on water scarcity, not flood risks, and the water yield model

is not suitable to predict changes in flood risks, climate change may introduce more extreme

events, including increasingly erratic rainfall patterns that result in local floods. This is also

expected to be the case in semi-arid regions like Iran (Vaghefi et al., 2019), especially in areas

with low vegetation density to capture excess rainwater as is the case for example in the Khormaloo

watershed. The province Golestan has implemented several watershed management projects in

recent years to control and reduce flood-peak discharge, and the Narmab Dam, constructed at the

end of the study area, also functions as flood control infrastructure, the benefits of which were not

further explored in this study.

7 Conclusions

Global anthropogenic water stress, especially in semi-arid regions around the world, endangers

freshwater supply and puts water security at risk. Evaluating past trends, assessing current

conditions and anticipating future change is paramount for the sustainable use and management of

increasingly scarce freshwater resources. At the same time, searching for easy communicable

indicators such as the water stress index and using monetary values to proxy potential economic

37
costs is crucial to raise public and policymaker awareness of the pending water crisis, and prioritize

the identification of sustainable water management practices on the political agenda.

This study differs from most previous studies applying the InVEST water yield model in

that it assesses the impacts of future climate and land use change scenarios separately and

simultaneously on the available water resources in an increasingly water stressed forested

watershed in northern Iran near the Caspian Sea. The results from the water yield model are used

to calculate a water stress index for the various sub-watersheds making up the case study area.

This allows policy and decision-makers to spatially prioritize conservation efforts to ensure water

security. We show the emergence of new water stressed sub-watersheds under the different climate

and land use scenarios. Climate change is expected to further reduce precipitation levels in this

semi-arid case study area from south to north and hence negatively influence water yields and

water supply in the future also in currently stress-free or low stress sub-watersheds. Given the

uncontrollable nature of climate change, policy makers rely largely on identifying measures that

allow water users locally and regionally to adapt to and mitigate the negative impacts of climate

change on water resource availability. For example, by implementing more water efficient

technologies in irrigated agriculture and other water using industries.

However, important trends in land use also become visible, which are expected to result in

a doubling of water use in the future. Land use may be more controllable using policy instruments

such as spatial zoning of specific land use activities, limiting the conversion of specific land cover

such as (semi-)dense forested watersheds into agricultural crop land or limiting the cultivation of

high water demand crops such as cotton. For example, taking the average amount of irrigation

water needed for the most important irrigated crops in the study area (5,320 m3/ha) and multiplying

38
this by the expected area expansion in 2036 as presented in Table 1 in this paper produces an

annual future water demand of almost 31 million m3.

With a design capacity of 115 million m3 and an expected average annual discharge of 77.3

million m3, the Narmab dam has been purposely built to address this increase in water demand and

relieve the pressure on future water supply and increase water security. However, our calculations

show that land use changes in the watershed feeding the dam already consume more than 42

million m3 per year. This is equal to 55% of the expected annual discharge (or 37% of the dam’s

design capacity). Accounting furthermore for changes in water yield across the future climate

change scenarios, water supply in the watershed is substantially less than the dam’s design capacity

and expected annual discharge under the combined RCP 8.5 climate and land use change scenario

5 (60 million m3). Without climate change, the expected land use changes in the case study area

over the next 18 years would yield just enough water to meet the dam’s design capacity. The

question therefore becomes to what extent the dam will be able to operate effectively under these

expected climate change conditions. The results presented in this paper justify further research into

the policy measures needed to ensure water security in the case study area and the surrounding

urban areas that are crucially dependent on the water supply from this forested watershed.

39
Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the experts in the Department of Natural Resources of Golestan Province and the

professors in the Departments of Watershed Management, Rangeland Management, and Environmental

Sciences in the Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources for their time and efforts

to complete the survey, which was used for the development of the land use change scenarios. We also

thank Mr. Mehdi Ziaei, manager of the Narmab Dam, for sharing relevant data and information. Alireza

Daneshi gratefully acknowledges the financial support received from Gorgan University of Agricultural

Sciences & Natural Resources (GUASNR) and the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship - Advanced Scholars

(QES-AS) program in Canada to visit the Water Institute at the University of Waterloo from October 2018

until August 2019 to conduct this study under the supervision of Roy Brouwer. Roy Brouwer contributed

to this article as part of his work in the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

(NSERC) Network for Forested Drinking Water Source Protection Technologies for Water (forWater).

Appendices
Table A.

Table B.

Table C.

Table D.

Table E.

40
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Figures legend

Fig. 3. Location of the Narmab Dam Basin in north-eastern Iran and its 10 sub-watersheds

Fig. 4. Percentage difference in simulated and actual water discharge at the outlet of the Khormaloo watershed at

varying Z values

Fig.3. Land use maps and land use changes over time

Fig.4. Spatial distribution of current (2018) and future precipitation and evapotranspiration under the RCP 2.6 and

RCP 8.5 climate change scenario

Fig.5. Spatial trends in water yield under current (2018) and different climate and land use change scenarios

Fig.6. Changes in water yield, water consumption and water supply in m3 in each sub-watershed under current

(2018) and different climate and land use change scenarios

Fig.7. Water Stress Index (WSI) in the case study area under current (2018) and different climate and land use

change scenarios

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Tables legend

Table 1. Estimated areas and percentage changes of main land use types over time

Table 2. Economic costs of water supply changes under different climate and land use change scenarios compared

with the current situation

Appendices

Table A. Number of training points for each land use type

Table B. Classification accuracy verification values in the case study area for the years 2000 and 2018

Table C. Changes in water yield, water consumption and water supply (in 106 m3) in each sub-watershed under

different scenarios

Table D. Calculated Water Stress Indicator (WSI) for each sub-watershed under different scenarios

Table E. Calculated gross value added of irrigated cropland and irrigation water in the case study area in 2018

Abstract

Water security, a key policy objective for sustainable development, is under stress as a result

of land use and climate change, especially in (semi-)arid areas like Iran. Land use change alters

surface runoff and affects basin-wide hydrological processes and water consumption, while

climate change modifies precipitation and temperature patterns and consequently

evapotranspiration and water supply. In this study, water yield, supply and consumption are

simulated in a watershed draining into the Caspian Sea in northern Iran, using the water yield

model in the Integrated Valuation of Environmental Service and Tradeoffs (InVEST) tool. The

novelty of this study is found in the combined modelling of the impacts of climate and land use

change scenarios on water security, translating these results into a water stress indicator, and

estimating the associated economic costs of reduced future water supply. The results show

substantial spatial variation of the negative impacts of water supply and future water security

across the watershed, further increasing the pressure on its inhabitants, their economic activities

and ecological values. The estimation of the economic costs of increased water insecurity

allows us to inform policy and decision-makers about future investments in climate adaptation

and mitigation.

52
Author Credit roles:
Alireza Daneshi, Roy Brouwer, Ali Najafinejad, Mostafa Panahi, Ardavan Zarandian and
Fatemeh Fadia Maghsood: Conceptualization;

Alireza Daneshi: Data curation;

Alireza Daneshi and Roy Brouwer: Formal analysis;

Alireza Daneshi: Funding acquisition;

Alireza Daneshi and Roy Brouwer: Investigation;

Alireza Daneshi, Roy Brouwer, Ali Najafinejad, Mostafa Panahi, Ardavan Zarandian and
Fatemeh Fadia Maghsood: Methodology;

Roy Brouwer: Project administration;

Roy Brouwer: Resources;

Alireza Daneshi, Ardavan Zarandian and Fatemeh Fadia Maghsood: Software;

Roy Brouwer, Ali Najafinejad, Mostafa Panahi: Supervision;

Alireza Daneshi and Roy Brouwer: Validation;

Alireza Daneshi and Roy Brouwer: Visualization;

Alireza Daneshi, Roy Brouwer and Fatemeh Fadia Maghsood: Roles/Writing - original draft;

Alireza Daneshi, Roy Brouwer, Ali Najafinejad, Mostafa Panahi, Ardavan Zarandian and
Fatemeh Fadia Maghsood: Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of interests

☒ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal
relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

53
☐The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be
considered as potential competing interests:

Fig. 5. Location of the Narmab Dam Watershed in north-eastern Iran and its 10 sub-watersheds

54
Fig. 6. Percentage difference in simulated and actual water discharge at the outlet of the Khormaloo watershed at
varying Z values

55
Fig.3. Land use maps and land use changes over time

56
 Current precipitation Future precipitation under RCP 2.6 Future precipitation under RCP 8.5

Future reference evapotranspiration Future reference evapotranspiration

Current reference evapotranspiration
under RCP 2.6 under RCP 8.5

57
Fig.4. Spatial distribution of current (2018) and future precipitation and evapotranspiration under the RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 climate change

scenario

Current Scenario 1 Scenario 2

Scenario 3 Scenario 4 Scenario 5

58
Explanatory note: Scenario 1: climate change scenario under RCP 2.6 without any land use change; Scenario 2: climate change scenario under RCP 8.5 without
any land use change; Scenario 3: land use change scenario without any climate change; Scenario 4: land use change and climate change under RCP 2.6; Scenario
5: land use change and climate change under RCP 8.5
Fig.5. Spatial trends in water yield under current (2018) and different climate and land use change scenarios
Current Scenario 1 Scenario 2

Scenario 3 Scenario 4 Scenario 5

Explanatory note:
Scenario 1: climate change scenario under RCP 2.6 without any land use change
Scenario 2: climate change scenario under RCP 8.5 without any land use change
Scenario 3: land use change scenario without any climate change
Scenario 4: land use change and climate change under RCP 2.6

59
Scenario 5: land use change and climate change under RCP 8.5
Fig.6. Changes in water yield, water consumption and water supply in m3 in each sub-watershed under current (2018) and different
climate and land use change scenarios

60
 Current Scenario 1 Scenario 2

Scenario 3 Scenario 4 Scenario 5

Explanatory note:
Scenario 1: climate change scenario under RCP 2.6 without any land use change
Scenario 2: climate change scenario under RCP 8.5 without any land use change
Scenario 3: land use change scenario without any climate change
Scenario 4: land use change and climate change under RCP 2.6
Scenario 5: land use change and climate change under RCP 8.5
Fig.7. Water Stress Index (WSI) in the case study area under current (2018) and different
climate and land use change scenarios

Highlights

 Water security risks in a watershed are modelled using InVEST’s water yield model

 The impacts of future climate and land use changes on water stress are analyzed

 Water yield is negatively affected by climate change and positively by land use change

61
 Future water supply is less than the operating flow of a newly constructed dam

 Spatially differentiated conservation efforts are identified to ensure water security

Table 1. Estimated areas and percentage changes of main land use types over time
Area (ha) Change (%)
Land use 2000 2018 2036 2000 - 2018 2018 – 2036
Dense Forest 42,890 40,681 38,882 -1.71 -1.39
Semi-Dense Forest 24,798 15,083 5,133 -7.52 -7.71
Rainfed Farmland 12,438 18,321 21,911 4.56 2.78
Irrigated Farmland 1,831 2,923 5,818 0.85 2.2
Dense Rangeland 40,158 41,962 43,952 1.40 1.54
Semi-Dense Rangeland 5,096 8,024 10,582 2.27 1.98
Residential area 342 559 717 0.17 0.12
River 835 835 691 - -0.11
Road infrastructure 715 715 715 - -
Dam reservoir 0 0 702 - 0.54
Total 129,103 129,103 129,103

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 Table 2. Economic costs of water supply changes under different climate and land use change scenarios compared with the current situation
Current Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3
Sub-watershed

Economic cost

Economic cost

Economic cost
Supply change

Supply change

Supply change
(106 m3/year)
Water supply

(106 m3/year)
Water supply

(106 m3/year)

(106 m3/year)
Water supply

(106 m3/year)

(106 m3/year)
Water supply

(106 m3/year)
(US$/year)

(US$/year)

(US$/year)
1 17.97 17.54 -0.43 94,600 11.27 -6.70 1,474,000 18.34 0.37 81,400
2 18.99 19.35 0.36 79,200 12.85 -6.14 1,350,800 19.98 0.99 217,800
3 7.39 8.38 0.99 217,800 5.55 -1.84 404,800 5.30 -2.09 459,800
4 20.53 20.00 -0.53 116,600 12.50 -8.03 1,766,600 18.63 -1.90 418,000
5 9.12 8.93 -0.19 41,800 4.98 -4.14 910,800 3.05 -6.07 1,335,400
6 22.95 19.16 -3.79 833,800 8.95 -14.00 3,080,000 22.16 -0.79 173,800
7 23.34 19.00 -4.34 954,800 9.86 -13.48 2,965,600 21.38 -1.96 431,200
8 9.73 6.85 -2.88 633,600 2.29 -7.44 1,636,800 5.84 -3.89 855,800
9 4.51 2.04 -2.47 543,400 -0.55 -5.06 1,113,200 3.80 -0.71 156,200
10 5.51 3.96 -1.55 341,000 0.42 -5.09 1,119,800 5.64 0.13 28,600
Total 140.04 125.21 -14.83 3,262,600 68.12 -71.92 15,822,400 124.12 -15.92 3,502,400

Current Scenario 4 Scenario 5

Sub-watershed

Supply change

Economic cost

Supply change

Economic cost
(106 m3/year)

(106 m3/year)

(106 m3/year)

(106 m3/year)

(106 m3/year)
Water supply

Water supply

Water supply
(US$/year)

(US$/year)
1 17.97 17.90 -0.07 15,400 11.48 -6.49 1,427,800
2 18.99 20.31 1.32 290,400 13.59 -5.40 1,188,000
3 7.39 6.20 -1.19 261,800 3.57 -3.82 840,400
4 20.53 18.06 -2.47 543,400 10.58 -9.95 2,189,000
5 9.12 2.81 -6.31 1,388,200 -0.95 -10.07 2,215,400
6 22.95 18.34 -4.61 1,014,200 7.98 -14.97 3,293,400
7 23.34 16.89 -6.45 1,419,000 7.34 -16.00 3,520,000
8 9.73 2.78 -6.95 1,529,000 -2.08 -11.81 2,598,200
9 4.51 1.32 -3.19 701,800 -1.28 -5.79 1,273,800
10 5.51 4.00 -1.51 332,200 0.24 -5.27 1,159,400
Total 140.04 108.61 -31.43 6,914,600 50.46 -89.57 19,705,400
Explanatory notes:
Scenario 1: climate change scenario under RCP 2.6 without any land use change
Scenario 2: climate change scenario under RCP 8.5 without any land use change
Scenario 3: land use change scenario without any climate change
Scenario 4: land use change and climate change under RCP 2.6
Scenario 5: land use change and climate change under RCP 8.5
Grey shaded cells represent situations where water supply increases compared to the current situation, and the economic value hence reflects benefits instead of costs.

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Appendices
Table A. Number of training points for each land use type

Land use Number of points

Dense Forest 483
Semi-Dense Forest 251
Rainfed Farmland 116
Irrigated Farmland 35
Dense Rangeland 456
Semi-Dense Rangeland 58
Residential area 8

Table B. Classification accuracy verification values in the case study area for the years 2000 and
2018

Classification accuracy verification values

Semi-Dense Forest

Irrigated Farmland
Rainfed Farmland

Dense Rangeland

Residential area
Dense Forest

Kappa index
Semi-Dense
Rangeland
Land cover classes

200 94.76 90.56 90.78 87.15 94.54 89.79 93.48 0.89

Producer's 0
accuracy (%) 201 91.33 90.10 87.21 84.13 92.31 89.57 91.24 0.85
8

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 Table C. Changes in water yield, water consumption and water supply (in 106 m3) in each sub-watershed under different scenarios

Water Yield Water Consumption Water Supply

Sub-watershed

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Scenario 4

Scenario 5
Current

Current

Current
1 18.20 17.77 11.50 18.81 18.36 11.94 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.46 0.46 0.46 17.97 17.54 11.27 18.34 17.90 11.48

2 19.12 19.48 12.98 20.11 20.44 13.72 0.13 0.13 0.13 0.13 0.13 0.13 18.99 19.35 12.85 19.98 20.31 13.59

3 9.35 10.34 7.51 8.63 9.53 6.90 1.96 1.96 1.96 3.33 3.33 3.33 7.39 8.38 5.55 5.30 6.20 3.57

4 20.73 20.19 12.69 20.82 20.25 12.77 0.20 0.20 0.20 2.19 2.19 2.19 20.53 20.00 12.50 18.63 18.06 10.58

5 10.67 10.48 6.53 10.08 9.83 6.07 1.55 1.55 1.55 7.02 7.02 7.02 9.12 8.93 4.98 3.05 2.81 -0.96

6 27.14 23.35 13.13 27.78 23.96 13.61 4.19 4.19 4.19 5.63 5.63 5.63 22.95 19.16 8.95 22.16 18.34 7.98

7 25.37 21.03 11.88 27.03 22.54 12.99 2.02 2.02 2.02 5.65 5.65 5.65 23.34 19.00 9.86 21.38 16.89 7.34

8 12.60 9.72 5.16 13.65 10.59 5.73 2.87 2.87 2.87 7.81 7.81 7.81 9.73 6.85 2.29 5.84 2.78 -2.08

9 8.19 5.72 3.13 8.22 5.74 3.14 3.68 3.68 3.68 4.42 4.42 4.42 4.51 2.04 -0.55 3.80 1.32 -1.28

10 10.33 8.78 5.25 11.15 9.51 5.75 4.82 4.82 4.82 5.51 5.51 5.51 5.51 3.96 0.42 5.64 4.00 0.24
Total 161.70 146.86 89.76 166.28 150.75 92.62 21.65 21.65 21.65 42.15 42.15 42.15 140.04 125.21 68.12 124.12 108.61 50.46
Explanatory note:
Scenario 1: climate change scenario under RCP 2.6 without any land use change
Scenario 2: climate change scenario under RCP 8.5 without any land use change
Scenario 3: land use change scenario without any climate change
Scenario 4: land use change and climate change under RCP 2.6
Scenario 5: land use change and climate change under RCP 8.5

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Table D. Calculated Water Stress Indicator (WSI) for each sub-watershed under different scenarios
Sub-watershed Current Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 Scenario 4 Scenario 5
1 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.04
2 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01
3 0.21 0.19 0.26 0.39 0.35 0.48
4 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.11 0.11 0.17
5 0.15 0.15 0.24 0.70 0.71 1.16
6 0.15 0.18 0.32 0.20 0.23 0.41
7 0.08 0.10 0.17 0.21 0.25 0.43
8 0.23 0.30 0.56 0.57 0.74 1.36
9 0.45 0.64 1.18 0.54 0.77 1.41
10 0.47 0.55 0.92 0.49 0.58 0.96
Total 0.13 0.15 0.24 0.25 0.28 0.46
Explanatory note:
Scenario 1: climate change scenario under RCP 2.6 without any land use change
Scenario 2: climate change scenario under RCP 8.5 without any land use change
Scenario 3: land use change scenario without any climate change
Scenario 4: land use change and climate change under RCP 2.6
Scenario 5: land use change and climate change under RCP 8.5

Table E. Calculated gross value added of irrigated cropland and irrigation water in the case study
area in 2018
Production (kg/ha)
Gross value Gross value
Share
Irrigation Average added added
irrigated
Crop water use Rainfed Irrigation Difference crop price irrigated irrigation
area
(m3/ha) (US$/kg) cropland water
(%)
(US$/ha) (US$/m3)
Wheat 35 3,140 2,556 5,044 2,488 0.3822 950.91 0.3028
Barley 10 2,060 1,691 3,369 1,678 0.3026 507.79 0.2465
Mung
5 5,620 566 1,554 988 0.7960 786.46 0.1399
bean
Cotton 15 10,460 980 2,000 1,020 0.9391 957.88 0.0916
Weighted average = (35/65) x 0.3028 + (10/65) x 0.2465 + (5/65) x 0.1399 + (15/65) x 0.0916 = 0.2329
Source: authors’ own calculations based on data provided in Ahmadi et al. (2018).

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