Adaptive groundwater pricing based on monsoon forecasting.

详细信息   

• 作者：Brown ; Casey Matthew.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2004
• 导师：Rogers, Peter P.
• 毕业院校：Harvard University
• 专业：Engineering, Environmental.;Economics, Agricultural.
• ISBN：0496093657
• CBH：3149521
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：18783323
• Pages：241

文摘

Seasonal climate forecasting can reduce the uncertainty distribution of key variables affecting water resources management, such as rainfall. While seasonal climate forecasting is improving, implementation of forecasts for the improvement of the management of water resources has not been widely demonstrated. Part of the cause is a lack of means by which the probabilistic information contained in forecasts can be applied to decision making. Mechanisms are required that translate probabilistic forecasts into decision support frameworks. This thesis presents a theoretical application of seasonal rainfall forecasts to the pricing of groundwater in irrigated agriculture. Pricing provides a readily comprehendible economic signal of the expectation for the coming monsoon.;An investigation of seasonal forecasting of the winter monsoon in Tamil Nadu, India is presented. The statistical approach is based on correlations with sea-surface temperatures and trends in the Pacific Ocean, drawing on the influence of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the Indian monsoon. Next, the thesis presents the development of the mechanism used to translate expectations of future water availability, as reflected in the forecasts, to groundwater prices. The pricing mechanism is then evaluated using stochastic dynamic programming to determine the expected benefits of using the forecast-based price versus a single, static price that maximizes benefits based on long term averages. The results indicate that forecast-based pricing increases net social benefits in comparison to the single, static price by between 10 and 20 percent. A simulation analysis is then presented for an application of the pricing mechanism to the Palar River basin in Tamil Nadu, India. The results show that social cost pricing of groundwater including the replacement value for water used above recharge effectively stabilizes groundwater elevations and significantly increases net social benefits.;This thesis presents a new method to integrate seasonal rainfall forecasting with water resources management. It is the hope of the author that this work inspires new approaches to applications in seasonal climate forecasting. The use of economic signals to communicate climate expectations is not limited to groundwater pricing alone and could find many applications in water resources or other fields.