Assessing effects of adapted agricultural water management on hydrological processes using integrated hydrological modelling and field observations

Climate change is intensifying hydrological extremes, making droughts and floods more frequent and severe in agricultural landscapes. These changes pose growing challenges for water availability, crop productivity and sustainable land management. Effective adaptation requires a better understanding of how hydrological fluxes and storages respond to changing climatic conditions and human interventions. Interactions between soil moisture, groundwater, surface water and the atmosphere play a key role in determining water availability and system resilience in the context of increasing extreme events. However, many commonly used hydrological models simplify these interactions, which limits their ability to adequately assess the effects of water management measures under climate extremes.

This research aims to investigate how agricultural water management measures influence hydrological fluxes and storages by integrating physically based hydrological modelling with observational data. The focus is on agriculture-dominated catchments where management interventions such as controlled drainage, adjustable weirs and retention measures are applied. A spatially distributed, integrated hydrological model will be applied to simulate coupled surface and subsurface processes, including soil moisture dynamics, groundwater fluctuations, evapotranspiration and surface water flow, enabling a holistic assessment of hydrological system behaviour under climate extremes.

Model calibration and validation will be conducted using multi-source observational data, including in situ measurements of soil moisture at multiple depths, groundwater levels, surface water observations and satellite-derived products. This approach allows the evaluation of the model’s ability to reproduce internal hydrological states in addition to discharge. The validated model will then be used to assess the impacts of different water management strategies under variable climate conditions. The analysis initially focuses on one or two small agricultural catchments with dense observational coverage and in a later stage the modelling framework can be upscaled to larger catchments to explore the implications of water management strategies beyond the local scale.

By improving the representation and evaluation of subsurface–surface–atmosphere interactions, this work aims to support the development of more robust and resilient agricultural water management strategies under a changing climate.