A recent study entitled “Finding Water Scarcity amid Abundance Using Human-Natural System Models,” and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has revealed that determining whether a region will suffer water scarcity or not in the future is dependent on understanding the fine-level interactions between nature and people.

The study’s lead author, William Jaeger, an economist in Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences, said that up to 2 billion people around the world face water shortages now and in the future. Climate change, rising standards of living and a growing global population are all factors that are tied to emerging water scarcities.

“Recent droughts across the West have underscored the vulnerability of even highly developed economies to water scarcity,” Jaeger said. “And climate change will only heighten the need to anticipate water shortages worldwide.” It’s a daunting task, he said, because the interactions between natural water supply and human water demands are complex, and involve “linkages and feedbacks” that are difficult to anticipate.

Drawing on a 6-year modelling study, Willamette Water 2100, which projects water scarcity in the Willamette River basin of western Oregon through to 2100, the researchers have developed a new computer model named Willamette Envision, which represents the fine-level interactions between the basin’s natural water supply and the human system’s water demands.

According to Jaeger, daily flows of water were modelled down to the stream reach and parcel level.

“We modelled the quantity of water diverted down to a given farmer’s field on a given day, reflecting what that farmer had planted and when, when it last rained, and taking account of that farmer’s likely profits and water right priority. That level of detail is rare in a model, especially having similar detail for both the natural and human parts of the system.”

Jaeger hopes Willamette Water 2100 will be a model — in the largest sense of the word — for other regions as they anticipate and mitigate threats from water scarcity. “Our project is specific to the Willamette Basin,” he said, “but we think many of our insights could help people in other parts of the world come to grips with the complexity of their own water scarcity issues.”

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