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| Titel |
Alternative socio-centric approach for model validation – a way forward for socio-hydrology |
| VerfasserIn |
Tim van Emmerik, Yasmina Elshafei, Roobavannan Mahendran, Jaya Kandasamy, Saket Pande, Murugesu Sivapalan  |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2017
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
en
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 19 (2017) |
| Datensatznummer |
250141701
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2017-5237.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| To better understand and mitigate the impacts of humans on the water cycle, the importance
of studying the co-evolution of coupled human-water systems has been recognized. Because
of its unique system dynamics, the Murrumbidgee river basin (part of the larger
Murray-Darlin basin, Australia) is one of the main study areas in the emerging field of
socio-hydrology. In recent years, various historical and modeling studies have contributed to
gaining a better understanding of this system’s behavior. Kandasamy et al. (2014) performed
a historical study on the development of this human-water coupled system. They
identified four eras, providing a historical context of the observed “pendulum” swing
between first an exclusive focus on agricultural development, followed by increasing
environmental awareness, subsequent efforts to mitigate, and finally to restore environmental
health.
A modeling effort by Van Emmerik et al. (2014) focused on reconstructing
hydrological, economical, and societal dynamics and their feedbacks. A measure of
changing societal values was included by introducing environmental awareness as an
endogenously modeled variable, which resulted in capturing the co-evolution between
economic development and environmental health. Later work by Elshafei et al.
(2015) modeled and analyzed the two-way feedbacks of land use management and
land degradation in two other Australian coupled systems. A composite variable,
community sensitivity, was used to measure changing community sentiment, such that
the model was capable of isolating the two-way feedbacks in the coupled system.
As socio-hydrology adopts a holistic approach, it is often required to introduce
(hydrologically) unconventional variables, such as environmental awareness or
community sensitivity. It is the subject of ongoing debate how such variables can be
validated, as there is no standardized data set available from hydrological or statistical
agencies.
Recent research (Wei et al. 2017) has provided one such avenue for validation, by using
newspaper articles from the last 169 years to derive an index of economic development and
environmental sustainability for the complete Murray-Darlin basin. Based on this alternative
approach, the similar time periods as Kandasamy et al. (2014) were derived independently.
Furthermore, their environmental sustainability index closely follows the parsimoniously
modeled environmental awareness from Van Emmerik et al. (2014). Besides a direct
validation of previous studies, this independent work provides credibility for the development
and use of models such as those developed by Van Emmerik et al. (2014) and Elshafei et al.
(2015).
With this presentation, we aim to highlight how alternative sources of societal data
can be used to independently validate and assess the realism of socio-hydrological
models in spite of the fact that at least a significant part of the societal values has
to remain endogenous, and only coupled socio-hydrological models of the Van
Emmerik et al. (2014) and Elshafei et al. (2014, 2015) are indispensable for any
generalization from highly monitored to unmonitored places, underpinned by general
theories.
References
Elshafei, Y., et al. : "A prototype framework for models of socio-hydrology: identification of key feedback loops and parameterisation
approach." HESS, 2014.
Elshafei, Y., et al. : "A model of the socio-hydrologic dynamics in a semiarid catchment: Isolating feedbacks in the coupled
human-hydrology system”, WRR, 2015.
Kandasamy, J., et al. : "Socio-hydrologic drivers of the pendulum swing between agricultural development and environmental
health: a case study from Murrumbidgee River basin, Australia." HESS, 2014.
Van Emmerik, T., et al. : "Socio-hydrologic modeling to understand and mediate the competition for water between agriculture
development and environmental health: Murrumbidgee River basin, Australia." HESS, 2014.
Wei, et al.: "Evolution of the societal value of water resources for economic development versus environmental sustainability in
Australia from 1843 to 2011", Global Environmental Change, 2017. |
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