University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses 2018 EVALUATING POLICY AND CLIMATE IMPACTS ON WATER RESOURCES SYSTEMS USING COUPLED HUMAN- NATURAL ODELM S HASSAAN FURQAN KHAN Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Civil Engineering Commons, and the Environmental Engineering Commons Recommended Citation KHAN, HASSAAN FURQAN, "EVALUATING POLICY AND CLIMATE IMPACTS ON WATER RESOURCES SYSTEMS USING COUPLED HUMAN-NATURAL MODELS" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 1362. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1362 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. EVALUATING POLICY AND CLIMATE IMPACTS ON WATER RESOURCES SYSTEMS USING COUPLED HUMAN-NATURAL MODELS A Dissertation Presented by HASSAAN FURQAN KHAN Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY SEPTEMBER 2018 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Environmental and Water Resources Engineering © Copyright by Hassaan Furqan Khan 2018 All Rights Reserved EVALUATING POLICY AND CLIMATE IMPACTS ON WATER RESOURCES SYSTEMS USING COUPLED HUMAN-NATURAL MODELS A Dissertation Presented by HASSAAN FURQAN KHAN Approved as to style and content by: _________________________________ Casey Brown, Chair _________________________________ David Ahlfeld, Member __________________________________ Bernard Morzuch, Member __________________________________ Yi-Chen E. Yang, Member __________________________________ Richard Palmer, Department Head Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering DEDICATION To my parents, for decades of hard work and sacrifices that made all of this possible ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The following is not an exhaustive list of people who have contributed towards this work, for that is simply not possible in this short space. I wish to emphasize that had it not been for the numerous generous people Allah placed in my life, I would have never been able to complete my PhD. Having established that……. I am grateful to my advisor Casey Brown for his guidance throughout my graduate education. I would like to thank Ethan Yang for going out of his way to mentor me, and for always being available and willing to help me navigate the challenges that came up during my time at UMass. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Ethan for his extraordinary dedication to helping me grow as a scholar. Bernie Morzuch, for showing me what a great teacher looks like, and for his (unexplainable) belief in me. I would also like to thank Dr. Ahlfed for his helpful comments and insights. I extend thanks to the various organizations (IFPRI, WAPDA, PMD, SFPUC) that supported the work presented in this dissertation. I would like to make a special mention of the role my colleagues, especially the Hydrosystems Research Group, played in my development as a scholar. I am extremely grateful to Sungwook, Patrick, Katherine, Umit and every member of the HRG for the stimulating discussions, tutelage and collaborations throughout my time here. To say they helped me in my work would be an understatement. To my friends who made the years in Amherst the most memorable of my life: from the bottom of my heart, thank you. From skiing trips to the potluck dinners to the intramural soccer tournaments, these friendships and bonds were invaluable in keeping me sane and energized. I have to mention the fabulous housemates I had the privilege of v living with: Mark, Joe, Amro, Chinedum and Ho-Zhen. Thank you for being my anchors in turbulent waters. In particular, I want to acknowledge the hugely influential role Mark Hagemann played during my PhD. Along with showing me the ropes of adult life when I moved to Amherst, Mark is the sole reason why I successfully learnt how to code. Finally, none of this would be possible without the countless sacrifices my parents made in allowing me to pursue a high quality education. I am forever grateful to them and to my large and loving family whose support and belief helped me get through to the finishing line. vi ABSTRACT EVALUATING POLICY AND CLIMATE IMPACTS ON WATER RESOURCES SYSTEMS USING COUPLED HUMAN-NATURAL MODELS SEPTEMBER 2018 HASSAAN FURQAN KHAN, B.S., LAFAYETTE COLLEGE M.S., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Casey M. Brown Extensive human intervention in the terrestrial hydrosphere means that virtually every river basin globally reflects the interaction between human and natural hydrologic processes. Thus, sustainable watershed management needs to not only account for the diverse ways humans benefit from the environment but also incorporate the impact of human actions on the natural system. Informed policy making to address our water challenges requires a comprehensive understanding of these feedbacks and how they might be affected by future changes in climate. This work develops coupled human-natural models for improved surface water and groundwater management in water-scarce regions under future changes in climate. An agent-based water use model is coupled with a physically-based groundwater model in an agricultural setting to compare groundwater management policies under varying climatic conditions. Shifting spatial scales to a watershed level, we couple a process-based distributed hydrologic model with an agent- based model to simulate the impacts of water management decisions on the food-water- vii energy-environment nexus in transboundary river basins. A stochastic weather generator is developed to produce a wide ensemble of future climate, changes in which can vary spatially and temporally, while incorporating low-frequency variability. The primary goal of this work is to advance modeling approaches that effectively represent heterogeneity within a water system, capture the linkage between society and hydrology, and account for future changes in climate. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... xiii LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... xiv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1 2. GUIDING GROUNDWATER POLICY IN THE INDUS BASIN OF PAKISTAN USING A PHYSICALLY BASED GROUNDWATER MODEL .............6 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................6 2.2 Existing Literature .............................................................................................7 2.2.1 The Indus Aquifer in Punjab ...............................................................9 2.3 Methods............................................................................................................10 2.3.1 Model Development..........................................................................10 2.4 Scenarios ..........................................................................................................16 2.4.1 Groundwater Control ........................................................................16 2.4.2 Canal Infrastructure ..........................................................................17 2.4.3 Precipitation change ..........................................................................18 2.5 Results and Discussion ....................................................................................19 2.5.1 Groundwater Policy Implementation ................................................24 2.5.2 Limitations and future development .................................................26 ix 2.6 Conclusion .......................................................................................................28 3. A COUPLED MODELING FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE WATERSHED MANAGEMENT IN TRANSBOUNDARY RIVER BASINS ..........30 3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................30 3.2 Previous studies of coupled natural-human system modeling .........................32 3.3 Methodology ....................................................................................................35 3.4 Application of the Modeling Framework ........................................................42 3.4.1 Impact of Agent Preferences – Mekong Demonstration ...................42 3.4.2 Impact of Agent Cooperation – Niger Demonstration ......................48 3.5 Discussion: Dynamic Coupled Natural Human Systems Modeling ................53 3.5.1 Limitation and Future Work ..........................................................55 3.6 Conclusion .......................................................................................................57 4. EFFECTS OF SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL VARIABILITY ON PERFORMANCE OF GROUNDWATER MARKETS ...............................................59