Effects of water re-allocation in the Ebro river basin: A multiregional input-output and geographical analysis

The quality and availability of water are affected by numerous variables, through which the evaluation of water uses from different perspectives, and policy proposals to save water have now become essential. This paper aims to study water use and the water footprint from a river basin perspective, taking into account regions, sectors, and municipalities, while considering the physical frontier along with the administrative sectors. To this end, we have constructed a multi-regional input-output table for the Ebro river basin, disaggregating the primary sector into 18 different crops and 6 livestock groups. We pay special attention to crop production because it is the most water-consuming industry. The construction of the multi-regional input-output model represents an important contribution to the literature, in itself, since, to the best of our knowledge, it is the first to be built for this large basin. We extend this multi-regional input-output model to assess the water footprint by sectors and regions within the basin. We use these data to propose two scenarios: reallocating final demand to reduce the blue water footprint (scenario 1), and increasing value added (scenario 2). These scenarios outline the opportunity costs of saving water in socioeconomic terms in the basin. In another application, we downscale the multi-regional input-output model results at the municipal level and depict them using a geographical information system, identifying the hotspots and the areas that would pay for the socioeconomic opportunity costs of saving water. Our results suggest that saving 1 hm 3 of blue water could cost around €41, 500 of value added if we consider the entire basin. However, this water re-allocation implies losses and gains at the municipal level: some municipalities would reduce value added by more than €30, 000, while others would gain more than €85, 000 of value added. These tools and results can be useful for policy makers when considering re-allocating water. The contribution and the novelty of this paper is the construction of the multiregional input-output model for the Ebro river basin, and its link with geographical systems analysis at the municipal level

Environmental and socioeconomic factors of abandonment of rainfed and irrigated crops in northeast Spain

Changes over the last century in the economic model of European countries and the development of the market economy have led to intense shifts in land occupation patterns. Agricultural abandonment is an important consequence of these processes and has modified natural and cultural landscapes, involving side-effects for society. Understanding how environmental and socio-economic factors influence the abandonment process can provide useful insights for managing investments, whether from the public or the private sector. In Spain, the Pyrenees and the Ebro Depression are two differentiated areas in terms of land-use dynamics, particularly in terms of the agricultural model carried out. In this paper we have analyzed the agricultural abandonment in these areas during the 1987-2012 period in relation to several potential explanatory factors. The analysis focuses on the abandonment of rainfed and irrigated herbaceous crops in order to derive specific explanations according to the crop type and geographical region. Crop covers were classified from four Landsat scenes, and conditions were described by topographic variables, human factors and drought occurrence. Boosted regression trees (BRT) were used to identify the most important variables and to describe the relationships between agricultural abandonment and key factors. Topography derived variables were found to be the main determinants, except for irrigated crops in the Ebro Basin, where locational factors play a more important role. BRT models allowed us to identify other significant patterns such as: the vulnerability of irrigated crops to drought; the higher dependence of agricultural activity in the Pyrenees on internal networks; pattern shifts of land abandonment in the analyzed sub-periods, and; evidence of the importance of economic diversification for maintaining cropland