Conjunctive Water Resources Management Strategies

Conjunctive water resources management entails the coordinated development and use of surface water and groundwater to optimise supply reliability, environmental protection and agricultural or urban demands. By treating rivers, reservoirs, aquifers and minor water bodies as a single, interconnected system, practitioners can buffer against seasonal variability, drought and competing uses. Key elements include balancing withdrawals and recharge, exploiting natural storage in aquifers, enhancing resilience to climate change, and applying decision-support tools that account for hydrological interactions, socioeconomic objectives and ecological constraints. Practical implementation ranges from managed aquifer recharge schemes and revised irrigation networks to basin-scale simulation–optimization models that inform adaptive policies and operational rules.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have demonstrated the potential of reactivating and safeguarding small water bodies within traditional irrigation systems to achieve significant water-saving gains. In one case, restoring ephemeral ponds and channels in rice paddies reduced the water footprint of production by about 30%, cut national freshwater consumption by nearly 10%, and raised irrigation self-sufficiency from a marginal level to around a third of demand. The approach also proved effective in mitigating yield losses during drought years. These findings underline the value of integrating minor surface reservoirs with existing irrigation and drainage networks to bolster system resilience.

Conjunctive Water Resources Management Strategies publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in conjunctive water resources management strategies across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Conjunctive use: Integrated management of surface water and groundwater to meet diverse demands while maintaining system sustainability.

Artificial recharge: Deliberate augmentation of groundwater reserves by infiltrating or injecting surface water into an aquifer.

Simulation–optimization: Coupling of numerical flow and storage simulations with optimisation algorithms to identify management strategies under multiple objectives.

Aquifer: Subsurface, water-bearing geological formation that stores and transmits groundwater.

Pareto-optimal solutions: Set of management scenarios representing the best possible trade-offs between conflicting objectives, such as water supply and environmental protection.

References

1. Enhancing rice production sustainability and resilience via reactivating small water bodies for irrigation and drainage. Nature Communications (2023).
2. Multi-objective planning for optimal exploitation of surface and groundwater resources through development of an optimized cropping pattern and artificial recharge system. Ain Shams Engineering Journal (2023).
3. The effect of climate change on surface and groundwater resources using WEAP-MODFLOW models. Applied Water Science (2023).
4. Basin-scale multi-objective simulation-optimization modeling for conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater in northwest China. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (2020).