Climate change threatens water resources for major crops in the Serbian
Danube River Basin by the mid-21st century
Abstract
As climate change is making weather patterns more erratic, water supply
for agriculture is becoming increasingly uncertain. This is particularly
concerning in the highly agricultural Serbian Danube River Basin, where
crops are mainly rainfed and the growing season is becoming warmer and
drier in recent years. Assessing the balance between future agricultural
water demand and availability under changing climate is critical to
developing strategies to combat water scarcity challenges. To understand
how changing precipitation and temperature affect water availability in
this region during 2041-2070, we implemented the Soil and Water
Assessment Tool+ hydrological model integrated with high-resolution crop
rotation, irrigation, and bias-corrected regional climate projection
data under two representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and
RCP8.5). Results suggest that declining precipitation, increasing
evaporative demand, and lack of widespread irrigation will intensify
green water (i.e., soil moisture from rainfall that rainfed systems
mostly rely on) scarcity (GWS) and crop water stress (CWS) across the
spring-planted, rain-fed cropping systems in Serbia, particularly during
the peak growing season. Cropping systems currently under irrigation
(i.e., using blue water from fresh surface and groundwater) that are
barely offsetting GWS and CWS will likely face the challenge of meeting
an additional 10-20% increase in irrigation water demand in the future.
These findings highlight that Serbia will need to increase agricultural
productivity and even expand irrigated area to tackle increased water
demand, but this may reduce future blue water availability.