Integrated hydrologic–agronomic–economic model for river basin management

The interdisciplinary nature of water resources problems requires the integration of technical, economic, environmental, social, and legal aspects into a coherent analytical framework. This paper presents the development of a new integrated hydrologic–agronomic–economic model in the context of a river basin in which irrigation is the dominant water use and irrigation-induced salinity presents a major environmental problem. The model's main advantage is its ability to reflect the interrelationships between essential hydrologic, agronomic, and economic components and to explore both economic and environmental consequences of various policy choices. All model components are incorporated into a single consistent model, which is solved in its entirety by a simple but effective decomposition approach. The model is applied to a case study of water management in the Syr Darya River basin in Central Asia.