Water security and agricultural systems in the Galapagos Islands: vulnerabilities under uncertain future climate and land use pathways

Frontiers in Water

Water

Carlos F. Mena¹  Manuel Narvaez¹  Cristina Mateus²  Fátima L. Benítez³  Homero A. Paltán⁴ 

[1] Institute of Geography, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador;Institute of Geography, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador;College of Science and Engineering, Institute of Biosphere, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador;Institute of Geography, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador;Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium;Institute of Geography, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador;School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom;

关键词: water security;    uncertainty;    climate change;    Galapagos Islands;    resilience;    food security;   

DOI  :  10.3389/frwa.2023.1245207

 received in 2023-06-27, accepted in 2023-08-17,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

The Galapagos Islands, a hotspot of ecological richness, face challenging climatic and development conditions which undermine regional water security. Yet, the way by which these conditions may change in the future is highly uncertain. In this study, we applied for the first time an uncertainty-based approach in the Galapagos Islands to understand thresholds and potential scenarios of risks to water security of agricultural catchments in the Galapagos Island. We applied a water systems model to the agricultural catchments as well as climate and land use scenarios to estimate physical changes in water availability and implications for drought and extreme flow thresholds. Our results highlight the key role of baseflow and its important sensitivity to precipitation changes in determining water security states in the Islands. In fact, a decrease in just about 25% of total water flows, from historical conditions, in the Islands would drive drought conditions resembling those of the emergency state of 2016. We also note that under a land use scenario which promotes sustainable practices, the robustness of the Islands to climate variations increases. Our study then provides the basis for an application of uncertainty-based approaches to enhance resilience of the agricultural water systems as well as other systems. Our results also emphasize the need to design flexible and comprehensive policies in the water, agricultural and interconnected sectors which consider the interlinkages of climate with other social and economic variables.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Paltán, Benítez, Narvaez, Mateus and Mena.