Integrated water and land management to deliver sustainable agriculture in semi-arid catchments

Arid and semi-arid regions are generally characterized by water scarcity and low per capita water allocation. Integrated catchment management provides an interdisciplinary framework that links physical, social and economical sciences into planning, policy and decision making. The main objective of the research is to develop a framework for a Multi Criteria Decision Support System (MCDSS) that provides planners and decision makers with a tool for planning integrated management of land and water. It also provides a soundly based analysis of agricultural water demand. The data from agriculture-dominated Faria catchment in the West Bank of Palestine was used for the study. The proposed approach integrates a rainfall-runoff model, a groundwater model, statistical analysis of spring discharges, a planning model and a multicriteria decision analysis model. Collectively they form the framework. These models were utilized to determine the optimal cropping pattern that maximizes net income of the catchment that could be sustained by its natural resources. Management alternatives can be introduced by determining the sustainable limits imposed by the limited natural resources. Management alternatives were developed to maximize the net benefit whilst sustaining the available water resources. To evaluate the overall efficiency of the introduced alternatives, decision criteria were developed to account for the economic and environmental consequences and a multi-criteria decision analysis was conducted to rank the land and water management alternatives. The MCDSS developed under this study is a very useful tool that can be used by different decision makers and planners in various areas. It can be used to investigate the efficiency of different management alternatives in satisfying the decision criteria that ultimately aim at achieving the policies and strategies envisaged for the area under study