报告题目:  Groundwater Management and the Protection of Instream Flows

报告人：Dr. Nicholas Brozovic

报告时间：2013年5月8日上午10点

报告地点：水院楼101会议室

联系人：姜娜

联系电话：62738523

报告内容简介：

    Agricultural groundwater use is increasingly being restricted to address the negative impacts of pumping on instream flows and related ecosystem services. Both the instream impacts associated with groundwater use and regulatory compliance costs to water users vary over space, but current regulations are generally spatially uniform. We analyze the effectiveness of alternate policies, including pumping restrictions, irrigation retirement programs, and tradable pumping permits, to reduce instream impacts of groundwater use.

    We use a geospatial dataset that includes economic and biophysical data on the population of groundwater-irrigated fields in the Nebraska portion of the Republican River Basin in the USA, an area with ongoing interstate water conflict. First, we use a geographic information system and numerical modeling to implement a field-level model of deficit irrigation that chooses crop mix, land allocation, and applied water. Second, we analyze the estimated costs of alternate possible water management policies at field, farm, and watershed level. In particular, we consider the extent to which adopting spatially-targeted policies can generate abatement cost savings to farmers while meeting streamflow protection targets.

    Our analysis suggests that for moderate reductions in aggregate water use, most of the potential cost savings and instream benefits can be obtained without accounting for spatial heterogeneity. However, if regulators need to reduce instream impacts significantly from current levels, spatially differentiated policies will generate sizable cost savings over uniform policies. Moreover. the ranking of policies, in terms of both total costs and instream benefits, is sensitive to the magnitude of water use reduction.

报告人简介：

 Nicholas Brozovic is an Associate Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Brozovic uses economic analysis to understand spatial, dynamic natural resource systems, and water resources in particular. He studies the design and evaluation of resource management policies that are cost-effective and maintain or improve environmental conditions. He is working to establish functioning environmental markets (e.g. water markets) that can be used both as research and teaching platforms and as models of environmental sustainability for industry. Dr. Brozovic's research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation, US Department of Agriculture, US EPA, US Geological Survey, and NOAA. He has received department, college, and national teaching awards.

欢迎参加！