Evaluating climate adaptation strategies on agricultural production in the Siminehrud catchment and inflow into Lake Urmia, Iran using SWAT within an OECD framework

Lake Urmia (LU) is an internationally-registered protected area that has declined steeply since 1995. One main cause for the decline has been attributed to climate change. The simulation and evaluation of the potentially negative effects of climate change and formation of adaption measures are essential to saving the lake. An integrated modeling framework is required to allow linkage and integration of climate models with basin and field scale models. The present study applied the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) framework (1994) for definition and assessment of climate change adaptation strategies. Siminehrud catchment is a major sub-basin of LU basin and was selected to explore the methodology. The results of simulations show that the catchment inflow into the lake could decrease up to 30% and agriculture production up to 50%. A number of adaptation strategies were examined and it was found that revision of cropping patterns is the best measure to mitigate the negative effect of climate change; however, none of the strategies proposed thus far will maintain the long-term average inflow into the lake at the current fig. of 570 MCM. The results demonstrated the ability of SWAT to link with the OECD framework and perform the required simulations and estimations of relevant indicators.