Evaluating and improving the sustainability of ecosystem services in river basins under climate change

This paper presents a new framework for evaluating the sustainability of basin-wide ecosystem services (ESs) in-cluding provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services. In this framework, the Soil and Water Assess-ment Tool (SWAT) and MODSIM1 models and experts' opinions are used to evaluate the ESs. To show the applicability of the proposed framework, it is applied to the Zarrinehrud river basin under three different climate change (CC) scenarios (i.e., RCP 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) for two different time horizons (i.e., 2020-2049 and 2020-2098). This basin is the main water supplier of the largest hypersaline lake in the Middle East, Lake Urmia. In the next step, 128 water resources management (WRM) scenarios are taken into account considering the projects defined by Urmia Lake Restoration National Committee (ULRNC). All ecosystem services are evaluated considering all WRM and CC scenarios. Finally, a group COPRAS-based decision-making approach is used to determine the best WRM scenario under climate change. The results show that WRM scenario 128 is the best scenario for improving eco-system services in the study area. This scenario includes some projects such as allocating water to the lake from new resources, rehabilitating irrigation and draining networks, and improving cropping patterns. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper introduces a new framework for evaluating the sustainability of basin-wide ecosystem services, using the Zarrinehrud river basin as a case study to assess the impact of climate change and water resources management scenarios on ecosystem services. The study finds that among all scenarios considered, WRM scenario 128 is the best option for improving ecosystem services in the study area.