After two decades of decreasing agricultural activities, in 2008 the Mongolian government started the
“Third Campaign of Reclaiming Virgin Lands”, aiming at massive expansion and intensification of the
agricultural sector. This policy motivated the study presented here, for which we used an integrated
modelling approach to investigate the feedbacks between land-use dynamics, agricultural management
and biophysical conditions, with a strong focus on assessing availability of water for irrigation. Our simulation
results clearly show that under the current extend of irrigated agriculture in several years water
demands exceeded water availability, indicating an overexploitation of water resources, mainly in the
period 1995–2006. Consequently, the targeted expansion of agricultural water use will either severely
deplete water resources with potential negative effects on other users and the environment, or policies
are needed to mitigate or avoid potential adverse effects. As simultaneously Mongolian authorities struggle
to implement integrated water resources management (IWRM), the latter might provide monitoring
concepts and regulations needed to minimise the potential gap between water demands and availability.
In this context, integrated modelling could be a scientific tool to support future land and water management
decisions, as researchers already started to integrate views and demands of Mongolian authorities
into scenario and model development (identified during stakeholder workshops), and will continue to do
so during the coming years of collaborative research.
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