Sustainability assessment of agricultural rainwater harvesting: Evaluation of alternative crop types and irrigation practices.

ABSTRACT: Rainwater harvesting (RWH) has been used globally to address water scarcity for various ecosystem uses, including crop irrigation requirements, and to meet the water resource needs of a growing world population. However, the costs, benefits and impacts of alternative crop types and irrigation practices is challenging to evaluate comprehensively. We present an assessment methodology to evaluate the sustainability of agricultural systems as applied to a southeastern U.S. river basin. We utilized detailed, crop-level cultivation information to calculate sustainability indicators (relative to well-water irrigation) at the basin scale (6-digit Hydrologic Unit Codes). 40 design configurations comprising crop types and irrigation practices were evaluated to demonstrate the methodology's robustnes

SUBMITTER: Ghimire SR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6510416 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature