Socio-Hydrological Governance for Watershed-Scale Water Management:Evaluating the Influence of Cranberry Production on Water Availability for Various Agricultural, Municipal and Industrial Water Uses

Climate-driven alterations of river flow regimes are increasing the occurrence of hydrological droughts and low-flow conditions in many humid watersheds, raising new challenges for basin-scale water management. In the Bécancour River basin (Québec, Canada), these pressures coincide with the expansion of cranberry production, a water-intensive agricultural activity supported by irrigation and reservoir-based water storage. Based on an initial watershed-scale assessment of individual and cumulative agricultural, municipal, and industrial water withdrawals, the first step of this research identifies agricultural water use—and particularly cranberry production—as a water use type that becomes especially influential under low-flow conditions. This highlights the need for a detailed, daily representation of cranberry farm-level water demand and reservoir operations, which cannot be adequately captured by conventional hydrological models alone. Building on this foundation, a Cranberry Farm Water Management Model is developed to explicitly simulate daily water use, storage, and recirculation processes. The model is coupled with HYDROTEL, a distributed hydrological model, allowing direct assessment of the impacts of cranberry farming practices on streamflow dynamics of the hydrographic network of the watershed. The outputs of this coupled framework then will serve as a basis for integration with a socio-economic model, enabling the analysis of farmer behavior, governance regulations, and feedback between water availability and management decisions. Together, this integrated socio-hydrological model provides a structured platform for evaluating future climate change scenarios and exploring mitigation and adaptation strategies for sustainable water governance in the Bécancour River basin. Accordingly, this communication focuses on the development and structure of the Cranberry Farm Water Management Model, as the central building block of this broader socio-hydrological governance framework.