Science of the Total Environment 755 (2021) 142962

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Science of the Total Environment

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scitotenv

Agent-based modelling of water balance in a social-ecological system:

A multidisciplinary approach for mountain catchments
Lisa Huber a,⁎,1, Johannes Rüdisser a,1, Claude Meisch a,b, Rike Stotten c, Georg Leitinger a,2, Ulrike Tappeiner a,d,2
a
Department of Ecology, University of Innsbruck, Sternwartestraße 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
b
Ministère de l'Environnement, du Climat et du Développement durable, Le Gouvernement du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, 4361 Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
c
Department of Sociology, University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstrasse 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
d
Institute for Alpine Environment, Eurac Research, Viale Druso 1, 39100 Bozen/Bolzano, Italy

H I G H L I G H T S G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T

• Transdisciplinary scenario approach

evaluating changes in social-ecological
systems
• Water balance assessment at catchment
scale and with hourly resolution
• Agent-based modelling of local water
users and managers and their behaviour
• Participatory scenario development to
evaluate effects of land use and tourism
• All scenarios considering climate
change until 2050 predict imminent
water scarcity

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The European Alps are known as the ‘water towers of Europe’. However, climatic and socioeconomic changes in-
Received 8 June 2020 fluence both water supply and demand, increasing the need to manage this limited and valuable resource prop-
Received in revised form 5 September 2020 erly to avoid user conflicts and water scarcity. Two major challenges emerge when assessing water scarcity in the
Accepted 6 October 2020
Alps: Firstly, mountainous regions are very heterogeneous regarding water availability and demand over space
Available online 14 October 2020
and time, and therefore water scarcity assessments need to be done at low temporal and spatial scales. Secondly,
Editor: Pingqing Fu the tight coupling of the natural and the social sphere necessitate an integrative approach considering dynamics
and interactions of the social-ecological system. Hence, we applied the agent-based water supply and demand
Keywords: model Aqua.MORE, which is designed for catchment scale and sub-daily temporal resolution, to a case study
Water demand and supply balance site in the Italian Alps. In the model, the water supply, the local water managers and water users are represented
Watershed management by interacting model agents. We estimated the water supply by refining the annual runoff data provided by the
Water resources modelling InVEST water yield model for within-year variations. Local stakeholders contributed to the development of quan-
Matsch valley titative and spatially-explicit scenarios for land use and tourism evolution. To evaluate water supply and demand
Participatory approach
dynamics, we assessed six scenarios for the period of 2015 to 2050: three different socio-economic policy path-
ways, both alone and in combination with a climate change scenario. In all six scenarios, the water demand:sup-
ply (D:S) ratio continuously rises from 2015 to 2050.The highest D:S ratio values are prognosed at the beginning
of the irrigation period in May. In all scenarios considering climatic changes, the D:S ratio exceeds 20% for several

⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: Lisa.Huber@uibk.ac.at (L. Huber), Johannes.Ruedisser@uibk.ac.at (J. Rüdisser), claude.meisch@eau.etat.lu (C. Meisch), Rike.Stotten@uibk.ac.at (R. Stotten),
Georg.Leitinger@uibk.ac.at (G. Leitinger), Ulrike.Tappeiner@uibk.ac.at (U. Tappeiner).
1
These authors contributed equally as first authors.
2
These authors contributed equally as senior authors.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142962
0048-9697/© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
L. Huber, J. Rüdisser, C. Meisch et al.
days, indicating potential water scarcity. The simulation results reinforce the importance of analysing water bal-
ances at a high temporal resolution and can support management processes and stakeholder dialogues for sus-
tainable watershed management.
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
1. Introduction
Although the European Alps provide freshwater to wide parts of
Europe (Immerzeel et al., 2020), selected regions in the Alps have his-
torically and recently experienced water scarcity (de Jong, 2015) and
will be increasingly affected by water scarcity in future (Kajfež-Bogataj
et al., 2009). The higher frequency and magnitude of water scarcity sit-
uations in the Alps is triggered by both the supply and the demand side:
Water supply is affected by temperature increase and changing precip-
itation patterns and frequency (i.e. drought events) (Briffa et al., 2009).
At the same time, water demand in several sectors (e.g., irrigation water
and artificial snowmaking) has increased and will further increase in
the Alps (Steiger, 2010; Hohenwallner et al., 2011).
When quantifying the effects, the assessment of water balance in the
Alps includes at least two major challenges: Firstly, water balance as-
sessments in mountainous regions are especially challenging due to
their heterogeneity in water supply and demand over both space and
time. Global water scarcity assessments (e.g. Alcamo and Henrichs,
2002; Islam et al., 2006) and assessments of the Alps on an annual
time scale (e.g. Meisch et al., 2019) have indicated a positive water
supply-demand balance in the Alps in an average year. However, several
authors have already noted that water scarcity often only becomes ap-
parent during occasional periods of high demand or below-average pre-
cipitation and may affect narrow regions only (Meigh et al., 1999;
Hanasaki et al., 2008; van Beek et al., 2011; Wada et al., 2011; Brunner
et al., 2019b).
Secondly, the European Alps are among those mountainous areas of
the world that are most strongly influenced by human impacts (de Jong,
2015), making them to complex social-ecological systems (SES) that are
subject to behavioural uncertainty, involve nonlinear relationships, and
have emergent and embedded properties (Dorward, 2014). The
water scarcity problems in the Alps are rather provoked by insuffi-
cient water management and water user conflicts than by physical
shortage in the water supply (Rijsberman, 2006; Hohenwallner
et al., 2011). To understand these water user conflicts, it is necessary
to go beyond the static comparison of water supply and demand, but
rather to obtain sound understanding of social behaviour (de Jong,
2015) and the complex interactions between competing water
users and between the users and the resource water (Huber et al.,
2019). A recommendable way to estimate the behaviour of agents in
changing framing conditions is an intensive stakeholder and/or experts
process (An, 2012).
To the best of our knowledge, no study so far has assessed water
scarcity in the Alps including both (a) high spatial and temporal resolu-
tion and (b) detailed analyses of behaviour and interactions within the
coupled human–water system. For water scarcity evaluations it has to
be stated that literature provides a wide range of water scarcity indices
(White, 2012; Pedro-Monzonís et al., 2015). Most of them are either
based on per capita water availability (e.g. Water Scarcity Index by
Falkenmark, 1989) or a direct comparison of water use or demand
and water availability (e.g. Withdrawal-To-Availability ratio by Raskin
et al., 1996; or the Supply:Demand ratio applied by Boithias et al.,
2014). We refer to the latter understanding and define water scarcity
as an imbalance of water supply and water demand, whereby ‘water de-
mand’ is characterized by the volume of freshwater required by humans
to satisfy their needs and ‘water supply’ by the volume of freshwater
that is available for human use within the catchment in the form of sur-
face or groundwater. Here, the objective of this study was to develop
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Science of the Total Environment 755 (2021) 142962
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
and apply a framework to assess potential water scarcity situations of
mountainous catchments at a high temporal and spatial resolution by
considering the whole human-water system with an interdisciplinary
approach. For a case study site in Matsch valley (Italian Alps), we
temporally downscaled annual values of water supply provided by the
InVEST water yield model (Meisch et al., 2019) for within-year varia-
tions. Moreover, we defined six future social-ecological scenarios
(considering changes in land use, tourism, and climate change) for
the case study site via a participatory scenario process. We imple-
mented the model ‘Agent based Modelling of Resources’ (Aqua.
MORE; Huber et al., 2019) for the scenarios and simulated the
water allocation between relevant water use sectors at the catch-
ment scale and with a sub-daily temporal resolution, which we con-
densed to daily values for evaluation. For the assessment of water
scarcity in the catchment, we applied a water demand:supply (D:S)
ratio for the six scenarios.
2. Material and methods
2.1. Site description
The study site is the Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER)
site ‘Mazia/Matsch valley’, in the Province of Bolzano/Bozen, South
Tyrol, Italy (Fig. 1). The catchment has an area of 91.6 km2, with eleva-
tions ranging from about 1200 m a.s.l. to 3725 m a.s.l. (Weißkugel/Palla
Bianca peak). Due to the sheltering effect of the surrounding mountains,
the Matsch valley is one of the driest valleys in the Alps, which had a
mean annual precipitation of 550 mm and a mean annual temperature
of 5.6 °C at 1500 m a.s.l from 1980 to 2010 (Hydrographic Office of the
Province Bolzano, South Tyrol). The summer is characterized by convec-
tive rainfall events, while the winter is relatively cold with little precip-
itation (Hydrographic Office of the Province Bolzano). In the middle of
the valley a runoff gauge is situated in the main creek, the Saldur/
Saldura River at 1632 m a.s.l. This gauge covers only a part of the
water supply of the catchment area because (1) non-river water re-
sources are not included, (2) the runoff gauge is not located at the outlet
of the valley, rather centrally, neglecting several downstream tributaries
and (3) water users have already withdrawn water (e.g., for irrigation
and hydropower use) upstream. However, the hydrograph at the
gauge is representative of the seasonal variation of the water flow as
being driven by snowmelt (in the spring) and ice melt (in the summer)
from the glaciers in the upmost regions of the catchment (Engel
et al., 2016).
Agriculture is known to be a dominant water use sector in Matsch
valley. Within the valley there are two irrigation managers who regulate
water distribution among fields. In addition, some farmers have access
to private springs or irrigation ditches without fixed rules (Bertoldi
et al., 2014). In 2015/2016, a hydropower plant was installed that ab-
stracts water from the weir, which is situated upstream of the runoff
gauge (Tscholl, 2016). Households and tourism are additional, but
smaller, water use sectors.
2.2. Aqua.MORE model basics
Aqua.MORE (Huber et al., 2019) is an agent-based model (ABM)
simulating water resources in a supply and demand system. Both,
water fluxes and socioeconomic actors are represented by individual
agents that mutually interact and cause complex feedback loops. The
L. Huber, J. Rüdisser, C. Meisch et al.
Fig. 1. The case study site Matsch valley: Overview, location of runoff gauge and powerplant weir, boundaries of the three sub-catchments, and the estimated water supply according to the
InVEST water yield model (Meisch et al., 2019).
agent categories are waters, managers, and users. Waters represent the
water supply, while managers and users represent socioeconomic actors
and their water demand. Waters are created every time step at one side
of the model environment and move all the way through it to the other
side (i.e., downstream), thereby forming a one-dimensional down-
stream flow. Waters have the obligatory state variable ‘amount_water’,
representing the amount of water available at this point, the value of
which is initially imported from an external data file and is adapted
whenever water is extracted by managers or users. Managers and
users have the state variables ‘residualwater’, ‘demand’, ‘scarcity’
and ‘excess’. ‘Demand’ represents the amount of water the man-
agers/users want to extract, but they eventually need to leave resid-
ual water in the resource flow (‘residualwater’) to satisfy the
demands of downstream users and to fulfil legal and ecological re-
quirements. In contrast to the users, the managers do not consume
the water themselves, but redirect all or a part of it to the associated
users.
2.3. Setting up an Aqua.MORE application for the study site
2.3.1. The water supply in Matsch valley
The water supply for the sub-catchments was derived from the
work of Meisch et al. (2019), who applied the water yield model
from the InVEST toolbox (Reservoir Hydropower Production
model) (Sharp et al., 2018) for the cooperation area of the Alpine
Space programme covering the Alps and their surrounding lowlands.
Meisch et al. (2019) estimated the total annual water yield as the dif-
ference between the total catchment annual precipitation based on
the Historical Instrumental Climatological Surface Time Series of
the Greater Alpine Region (HISTALP) precipitation maps for the pe-
riod 1979–2010 (Auer et al., 2007) and the total catchment annual
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Science of the Total Environment 755 (2021) 142962
actual evapotranspiration. For this study, the annual water yield for
the sub-catchments was extracted using ArcMap 10. Here, three
sub-catchments are defined (Fig. 1):
(1) the Upper Sub-catchment
(2) the Saldur River Gauge Sub-catchment
(3) the Lower Sub-catchment
For temporal downscaling, we followed the seasonal characteristics
of runoff provided by the runoff gauge. Runoff data from the gauge in
the Saldur River were available in 10-minute steps from 01.06.2009
on. The powerplant was installed in 2016, but powerplant operations
showed some irregularities in the first few months; therefore, we
only included data from 01.06.2009 until 31.12.2015. For every day
n of the year, a mean value qn of the measured runoffs was calculated.
To smooth out short-term fluctuations, we calculated the average
over 10 days:
qn−4 þ qn−3 þ . . . þ qnþ5
qroll10,n ¼ ð1Þ
10
where qroll10, n is the ‘rolling mean’ of runoff for day n (n = 1 − 365 for
every day of the year) after being averaged over 10 days. qroll10, n is
365
related to the total annual runoff ∑ qroll10,n , and the ratio was further
n¼1
multiplied with the total annual runoff of (1) the Upper Sub-
catchment, (2) the Saldur River Gauge Sub-catchment, and (3) the
Lower Sub-catchment. The resulting values for the Lower Sub-
catchment were used as initial input for Qin,lower (Fig. 2); values for
the Upper Sub-catchment were used as initial input for Qin,upper; and
values for the Saldur River Gauge Sub-catchment were compared to
runoff measurements in order to validate the approach.
L. Huber, J. Rüdisser, C. Meisch et al.
Fig. 2. Application of Aqua.MORE for the case study in the Matsch valley with the agents
waters (blue circles), managers (green diamond) and users (varying yellow shapes). Qin,
upper, Qin, lower and Qout describe the water supply in the Upper Sub-catchment, the water
supply in the Lower Sub-catchment and the outflow at the lower border of the model
domain, respectively.
2.3.2. The water demand in Matsch valley
Five agent categories of managers and users (i.e., hydropower plants,
irrigation managers, farmers, inhabitants and hotels) were chosen to rep-
resent the local water demand characteristics of the model region
Matsch valley (Fig. 2). By setting the order of the users, upstream and
downstream users were divided. This schematic representation of the
spatial dimension also allows the investigation of upstream–
downstream relationships: The hydropower user is fed by the water
supply of the Upper Sub-catchment (Qin,upper). The residual water of
the hydropower user, combined with the water supply of the Lower
Sub-catchment (Qin,lower), are available for the irrigation manager
(who supplies the farmers), the inhabitants, and the hotels.
With the help of data from literature and land-use maps, initial ‘de-
mand’ and ‘residualwater’ values for the managers and users can be es-
timated as follows:
a) Presuming a maximum utilization of the powerplant, the ‘demand’
of the hydropower user is 900 l s−1, which is the maximum flow
rate of the water turbine (Pelton® turbine). ‘Residualwater’ is set ac-
cording to the legal requirements, being 96 l s−1 all year round, and
an additional 25% of the original flow in the months from April to Oc-
tober (Tscholl, 2016).
b) During the irrigation season (May to September) the irrigation man-
ager extracts water from the main resource flow and passes it to var-
ious farmers (i.e., for farmland irrigation). The ‘demand’ of the
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Science of the Total Environment 755 (2021) 142962
irrigation manager is initialized with 60 l s−1 in the first year of the
model run to meet the need of the farmers in year 1. Every three
years, the irrigation manager increases his/her ‘demand’ if any of
the farmers has experienced water shortage (demand > supply)
within the last 3 years, but none of the inhabitants or hotels has expe-
rienced shortage. However, if inhabitants or hotels have experienced
shortage, the irrigation manager is forced to decrease his/her ‘de-
mand’. Moreover, we assume that he/she is bound to leave a mini-
mum of 96 l s−1 ‘residualwater’ in the stream all year round to
maintain the ecological quality of the Saldur River.
c) According to land-use maps based on geo-rectified aerial images, ag-
ricultural census data, and on-site assessments, more than 215 ha
were irrigated in 2015, i.e. 210.9 ha of grassland, 3.7 ha of straw-
berries, 0.3 ha of cherries, and 0.5 ha of raspberries (Fig. 3).
In the model, only one irrigation manager was implemented in order
to simplify the actual situation of several irrigation managers and irriga-
tion systems. To account for the various irrigation areas, we imple-
mented 6 farmers who, in the first year of simulation, irrigate an area
of 35 ha of grassland and 0.75 ha of special cultures each, summing up
to the mapped total of 210 ha of grassland and 4.5 ha of special cultures,
which corresponds to the actual irrigation situation in 2015 (Fig. 3). The
farmers do not abstract water from the main water flow directly, but
they are provided with waters from the irrigation manager. Every farmer
is provided with irrigation water for 24 h in a period of 6 days between
May 1 and September 21 so that every farmer can consume water on
24 days per season. On these 24 days, the current specific demand for
grassland is approximately 5.2 m3 ha−1 h−1 to reach a total irrigation
of 300 mm per season, which is the actual irrigation demand in Matsch
valley (Bertoldi et al., 2014). Based on findings about physiological and
environmental controls of evapotranspiration for annual crops and
grassland (Sutherlin et al., 2019), we assumed the water demand of
the special cultures to be approximately double the demand for grass-
land, i.e. 10.4 m3 ha−1 h−1.
−1 −1 −1
demandirr;grassland ¼ 24 d  24 h  5:2 m3 ha h ¼ 3000 m3 ha ¼ 300 mm
ð2Þ
−1 −1 −1
demandirr;special culture ¼ 24 d  24 h  10:4 m3 ha h ¼ 6000 m3 ha ¼ 600 mm
ð3Þ
d) The ‘demand’ of the inhabitants is determined by the number of in-
habitants, which was 449 in the first year of model run, the status
as of January 2018 (Municipality Mals, 2018), multiplied by the
mean daily water consumption of citizens in South Tyrol of 237 l
d−1 (=0.009 m3 h−1) (Tasser et al., 2008).
e) To account for the ‘demand’ of the hotels, the approximately 14,000
overnight stays per year were distributed equally to 365 days (=
38.4 per day) multiplied by the median water consumption in a
hotel per guest and per day of 290 l d−1 (=0.012 m3 h−1)
(Neunteufel et al., 2010).
The model code as well as the detailed model description following
the ‘updated Overview, Design concepts and Details’ (updated ODD)
protocol can be downloaded from https://www.comses.net/codebase-
release/6be4a0ef-0144-4125-9f30-1dbc0323cfb7/ (running of the
model requires NetLogo 6.0.4 or higher). The updated ODD protocol
also includes lists of the model variables and their initial values.
2.4. Scenario development and modelling
2.4.1. Land use and climate scenarios
In order to produce quantitative and spatially explicit land-use sce-
narios incorporating social, economic and environmental dynamics
L. Huber, J. Rüdisser, C. Meisch et al.
Fig. 3. Land use of Matsch valley (status as of 2015). SC indicates ‘special culture’.
fitted to regional climate challenges, we applied a transdisciplinary pro-
cess. For this, researchers in the field of ecology and sociology were in-
volved along with local stakeholders. Socio-economic storylines were
developed on the basis of several expert interviews (Bogner and
Menz, 2002) among six local and regional stakeholders (5 male, 1
female). Experts represented local municipal administration, local poli-
tics, forestry and regional farming representatives. The semi-structured
interviews focused on issues of the local farming system, local politics,
the local farming community, and the reputation of farming within
the municipality and helped to contextualize the general discourse.
The interview material was structured into following categories: local
farms and farm management, political restrictions, laws and political
guidelines, (farming) community cohesion and broader agricultural
structures. Based on this information, we developed storylines of
social-ecological future development until 2050 along the
above-mentioned categories, including ‘trending’, ‘positive’, and ‘nega-
tive’ versions (Table 1) inspired by the concept of community resilience
by Wilson (2012) describing resilient and vulnerable social systems.
A participatory workshop attended by 12 stakeholders (7 males, 5
females) from the Matsch Valley served to systematically involve local
knowledge to deepen and validate the developed storylines and to
translate them into quantifiable data (Walz et al., 2007; Kohler et al.,
2017). Further, the workshop contributed to the legitimacy of the
socio-economic scenarios (Nilsson et al., 2017) and enabled the dialog
among experts, decision-makers and stakeholders, and supported to
bridge the gaps between the latter and the research community
(Schermer et al., 2018; Mallampalli et al., 2016). During the workshop,
taking place in May 2017 in the Matsch valley, we presented the
storylines developed from the expert interviews and discussed them
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Science of the Total Environment 755 (2021) 142962
with the workshop participants regarding their plausibility and consis-
tency. Further, we integrated their remarks into the storylines (already
included in Table 1; see also Henrichs et al., 2010). Thereupon, we trans-
lated them into land-use scenarios i.e., ‘trending’, ‘positive’ and ‘nega-
tive’, incorporating the actors' knowledge of local issues and of social
and ecological dynamics (Kohler et al., 2017). We produced a qualitative
specification of spatially explicit land use and management until 2050.
All GIS tasks were executed with ArcMap 10.
Table 1
Description of the driving forces applied for the spatial scenario development in Matsch
valley.
Trending Agriculture is diversified, but of reduced importance for income.
storyline The total number of farms is decreasing. Part-time farmers further
reduce management intensity or even abandon it, while the
remaining full-time farmers are increasing their managements'
intensity. Tourism is growing slightly. Only a few local
employment opportunities remain, resulting in many commuters.
Positive Agriculture is diversified and many part-time farms gain
storyline additional income from local products and direct selling. The
valley is recognized as an organic region and successful in
maintaining sustainable winter and summer tourism seasons. The
population numbers remain stable, and local employment
opportunities exist.
Negative Despite the existence of some persisting part-time farms, only a
storyline few full-time farms with increasing size and focus on the most
productive fields and the most profitable cultivation remain. The
number of part-time farms is decreasing as there are no
investments and few if any successors. Income from tourism is
declining, and the local infrastructure is deteriorating. Large,
formerly managed grassland areas are being abandoned.
L. Huber, J. Rüdisser, C. Meisch et al.
Table 2
Global variables for model simulation, to be defined in the graphical user interface of Aqua.
MORE.
Global variable (GUI) Description
‘change_inflow’ Change in water supply (inflow) in % a−1
‘change_specdemand’ Change in the specific irrigation demand for both irrigated
grassland and special culture in % a−1
‘change_area_type1’ Conversion from irrigated grassland (2015) to irrigated
special culture (2050) in ha a−1
‘change_area_type2’ Conversion from non-irrigated grassland (2015) to
irrigated special culture (2050) in ha a−1
‘change_overnights’ Change in the number of overnights in % a−1
Future changes in the water supply due to climate change are
projected to range between −20% and −30% in the period 2030–2070
(Strauss et al., 2013; Kirchner et al., 2015; Hanzer et al., 2018). In
order not to overestimate the reduction of water supply and for reasons
of simplicity, we chose the lowest reduction (20%) and no seasonal fluc-
tuations. Moreover, we assumed the specific irrigation water demand of
all irrigated land (grassland and special cultures) to double from 2015 to
2050 due to the lower precipitation and enhanced evapotranspiration of
the plants caused by temperature increases and more frequent drought
periods (Mastrotheodoros et al., 2020).
2.4.2. Simulation and output assessment
For scenario implementation, five input fields in the graphical user
interface (GUI) of Aqua.MORE allowed us to set (1) annual changes in
inflow, (2) specific demands of grassland and special culture, (3) two
types of land-use conversion, and (4) tourism increases according to
the respective scenarios (Table 2).
For both types of land-use conversion, input is requested in total
numbers for the whole study site. In the program code, this number is
then distributed randomly among the six farmers.
In total, six scenarios were simulated: the three socio-economic pol-
icy pathways ‘trending’, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’—all with and without
climate change. We did 100 runs per scenario to account for the influ-
ence of the random component, the distribution of the land use conver-
sion types (see above).
The balance between water demand and supply needs to be defined
in space and time because the results might differ depending on the
considered spatial and temporal extensions (Syrbe and Walz, 2012). Al-
though the Aqua.MORE simulation operates on an hourly basis, we ag-
gregated all outputs to daily values for evaluation, as the usage of
lower temporal resolutions was reported to be of little added value
(Brunner et al., 2019b). To assess water scarcity on a daily basis, we cal-
culated a demand:supply (D:S) ratio because this index allows to ex-
plicitly compare locally specific water supply and demand (adapted
from Boithias et al., 2014):
D N + c), the irrigation manager first increased demand in year 3 (in sce-
D : S ratio ¼
S
where D is the anthropogenic water demand (m3 d−1) and S is the sur-
face and groundwater supply (m3 d−1). The D:S ratio can be used as a
water scarcity index because the higher the D:S ratio, the more water
stressed is the region of interest, whereby S:D ratios above 1 (100%) im-
ply that the demand is even higher than overall water supply.
Table 3
Water supply in the sub-catchments; values modelled by the InVEST water yield model (InVEST) and measured by the gauge (gauge).
Catchment area m3 year−1 (InVEST)
Saldur River gauge catchment 55,073,503
Upper Sub-catchment 26,341,328
Lower Sub-catchment 47,383,686
Science of the Total Environment 755 (2021) 142962
3. Results
3.1. Water supply refined for within-year variations
The mean total annual runoff for the Saldur River gauge catchment
estimated by the InVEST water yield model for the reference period
1970–2010 (Meisch et al., 2019) is approximately 10% lower than the
measurement based on the runoff gauge between 2009 and 2015
(Table 3).
Runoff with hourly resolutions for the Upper Sub-catchment and the
Lower Sub-catchment were saved as external csv data files and used as
initial input for the Aqua.MORE model application.
3.2. Water demand in the social-ecological scenarios
For the ‘trending scenario’, the ‘positive scenario’ and the ‘negative
scenario’, the local experts indicated 54 ha, 46 ha and 72 ha, respec-
tively, which they expect to turn from irrigated grassland to an irrigated
special culture by 2050 (‘change-area-type1’; Fig. 4). Additionally, they
expect 8 ha, 7 ha and 21 ha of grassland, which has not been irrigated in
2015, to turn into irrigated special culture land (‘change-area-type2’).
Moreover, in the trending and positive scenarios, tourism intensity
would increase, while in a negative scenario, it would stagnate. For
the trending scenario, we assume a yearly growth rate of 2.4%, which
has been the mean growth rate of overnights between 2008 and 2017.
For the positive scenario, we assume a doubling of this growth rate.
For the negative scenario, the growth rate is zero.
3.3. Model simulation and output
Based on these values, six scenarios were calculated with the follow-
ing settings (Table 4).
The amount of water supply in the catchment is substantially driven
by glacier melt with a runoff peak in June (Fig. 5A). Due to the simulated
climate change in scenarios T + c, P + c and N + c, however, the water
supply in the Lower Sub-catchment is lower than in scenarios T, P and N.
Water demand in the Lower Sub-catchment (i.e. of the irrigation man-
ager, the inhabitants and the hotels) increased in all six scenarios for
2050 compared to 2015 (Fig. 5B). The demand of the single farmers is
not explicitly presented here because it is only the irrigation manager
who abstracts water directly from the main resource flow; the farmers,
however, influence the demand of the irrigation manager. When the
criteria for an increase in irrigation water are fulfilled (i.e., water short-
age for the farmers and no shortage for the inhabitants or hotels within
the last 3 years), the irrigation manager increases irrigation water. In
several runs (out of the 100) of scenarios T and P, the irrigation manager
increased his/her demand in year 6 for the first time. In scenario N, how-
ever, the first increase was already done in year 3 (in 44 out of 100
runs). Also in all scenarios including climate change (T + c, P + c,
ð4Þ nario N + c even in all 100 runs!). As the irrigation water makes up a
high share of the total water demand in the Lower Sub-catchment, the
total demand is significantly higher in the irrigation period between
May 1 and September 21 (Fig. 5B). The increase in the mean total annual
water demand is between 33% (scenario P) and 196% (scenario N + c).
Overall, the risk for water scarcity is highly seasonal with a steep in-
crease at the beginning of the irrigation season and a smaller increase at
m3 year−1 (gauge) m3 h−1 (InVEST) m3 h−1 (gauge)
60,862,706 6287 6948
– 3007 –
– 5409 –
6
L. Huber, J. Rüdisser, C. Meisch et al. Science of the Total Environment 755 (2021) 142962

Fig. 4. Land-use changes (in ha) for the future scenarios ‘trending’, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ in the Matsch valley from 2015 to 2050. Conversion type 1: irrigated grassland in 2015 to
irrigated special culture in 2050. Conversion type 2: non-irrigated grassland in 2015 to irrigated special culture in 2050.

the end. While in the start year 2015, the D:S ratio is 8.5% on the first day
of irrigation (May 1st), it varies between a mean of 11.4% (P) and 15.3%
(N) for the scenarios without climate change and between 24.8 (P + c)
and 31.8% (N + c) for the scenarios with climate change. A maximum
value of scarcity can be observed in scenario N + c, which combines
the climate change scenario with the negative land use and the tourism
scenario. In all three scenarios that include climatic changes, the D:S
ratio exceeds 20% for 17 (N + c), 8 (T + c), and 7 days (P + c), which
indicates looming water scarcity.
4. Discussion
4.1. Development of the scenario modelling framework
The influence of socioeconomic developments, land-use changes
and climate change on water resources is an emerging social-
ecological issue in mountain catchments (Zierl and Bugmann, 2005;
López-Moreno et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2016; Meisch et al., 2019). As
the adequate investigation of such dynamically coupled SES is facilitated
by ABMs, we developed and applied a scenario modelling framework
using Aqua.MORE (Huber et al., 2019) to simulate future water use dy-
namics. The LTSER site Matsch valley, one of the driest catchments in the
Alps, was selected to apply and evaluate this framework. As reported for
many ABMs, a main challenge of the application was dealing with the
various social and natural aspects of interactions at different spatial
and temporal scales (Lippe et al., 2019). As the study aimed at investi-
gating sub-daily water dynamics at the catchment scale, the water sup-
ply was downscaled, and a few local water users were represented as
actor groups. Large-scale social actors such as institutional or gover-
nance structures can have a significant impact on all kinds of processes
at the local or regional level. However, these effects were not repre-
sented within the Aqua.MORE model structure, but were considered
during socio economic storyline development. To answer other research
questions, the large-scale actors could be integrated stronger, e.g. via
separate agents.
4.2. Characteristics of water supply in mountainous regions
Our case study represents a high mountain catchment, with the
water supply having a high seasonal variability, characterized inter
alia by the melt of snow and glacier ice. To capture the particular runoff
regime of our case study site, we temporally downscaled the annual In-
VEST water yield data from Meisch et al. (2019) on the basis of long-
term average within-year variations measured at the runoff gauge.
The same approach could be applied to any other runoff regimes of
mountain catchments. To make a downscaling of InVEST data also pos-
sible for catchments without runoff gauges, we suggest consulting
hydrographs of hydrological similar catchments (e.g. in terms of eleva-
tion and glaciation level). For validating the downscaling to catchment
level, we compared the InVEST outputs to the yearly sum of measured

Table 4
Variable settings for scenario simulations. Explanations for the variables in Table 2. The values are annual changes.

Scenario abbreviation T P N T+c P+c N+c

Land use & tourism change Trending Positive Negative Trending Positive Negative
Climate change No No No Yes Yes Yes
‘change_inflow’ 0 0 0 −0.0065a −0.0065a −0.0065a
‘change_specdemand’ 0 0 0 +0.0210b +0.0210b +0.0210b
‘change_area_type1’ +1.5 ha +1.3 ha +2.6 ha +1.5 ha +1.3 ha +2.6 ha
‘change_area_type2’ +0.2 ha +0.2 ha +0.6 ha +0.2 ha +0.2 ha +0.6 ha
‘change_overnights’ +0.0250 +0.0500 0 +0.0250 +0.0500 0
a
Leads to a 20% decrease ofwater supply from 2015 to 2050.
b
Leads to a doubling of the specific demands from 2015 to 2050.

7
L. Huber, J. Rüdisser, C. Meisch et al. Science of the Total Environment 755 (2021) 142962

Fig. 5. Model results for the Lower Sub-catchment. N, T, P indicate the three socio-economic policy pathways ‘negative’, ‘trending’, and ‘positive’; N + c, T + c and P + c also include climatic
changes. Dotted lines show the base line in 2015, wheras solid lines show the scenario simulations in 2050 (mean value of hundred simulations with the colour band indicating the minima
and maxima of simulation results). Horizontal black lines indicate the start and end of the irrigation period, as determined by law, and hence a sudden demand change in A) water supply,
B) water demand, i.e. sum of the demands from the irrigation manager, the inhabitants and the hotels, and C) ratio of the demand (B) to the supply (A).

runoff. The measured annual runoff for the Saldur River gauge
Sub-catchment is only 10% higher than the modelled one, which corrob-
orates the high accuracy of the study by Meisch et al. (2019) and the va-
lidity of our attempt to extract catchment-scale data from the large-
scale hydrological model. An explanation of the small discrepancy
may be found in the fact that the InVEST water yield model does not
consider glacier melt, even though glacier melts can add significantly
to the total availability of water, especially in highly glacierized catch-
ments such as Matsch valley (Huss, 2011; Hanzer et al., 2018). By
using the InVEST water yield for the scenario simulation, we present a
situation of (almost) vanished glaciers that is predicted to become a re-
ality by the end of the century (Hanzer et al., 2018). For further applica-
tions we can also recommend the following: (a) including
hydroclimatological models that fully account for snow and glacier
melt (e.g. Hanzer et al., 2016) and (b) considering climate change di-
rectly in the rainfall-runoff model, providing input data for Aqua.MORE.
4.3. Characteristics of water demand in mountainous regions
In Matsch valley, the total water demand is highest in the summer
due to irrigation. The case study thereby represents a characteristic of
wide parts in Europe, where the agricultural sector is one of the main
water-using sectors, having used 24% of the total abstracted water for
the period of 1997 to 2005 (EEA, 2009). Water demands for irrigation
in the summer might further increase with climate and land-use
changes (Bogataj and Sušnik, 2007), thereby reducing water availability
for other sectors, such as drinking water and energy production (Moser
et al., 2011). Contrastingly, demand for tourism water use is quite low in

8
L. Huber, J. Rüdisser, C. Meisch et al.
Matsch Valley. In other Alpine regions, tourism demand is certainly
higher and will further increase in future, leading to higher water de-
mand that competes with demands for agriculture and hydropower
(EEA, 2009). However, a different situation can be found in Alpine
catchments that are characterized by predominant winter tourism and
hence, high water demand (for artificial snowmaking, hotel spas, etc.)
in winter: In the Austrian Upper Ötztal, e.g., the water demand increases
almost fivefold in the winter (Vanham et al., 2009). In recent years, the
production of technical snow has become an important issue in almost
all ski areas and is likely to increase further with climate change (Klug
et al., 2012; Spandre et al., 2019). For the application of Aqua.MORE to
a case study dominated by winter sports, further water user agents,
e.g. demanding water for snowmaking reservoirs, can be easily included
(Huber et al., 2019). Furthermore, we additionally suggest the follow-
ing: (a) distinguishing between consumptive and non-consumptive
water use (Zhao et al., 2016) and (b) modelling water quality as well
to enable a better quantification of water for drinking water purposes
(Keeler et al., 2012).
4.4. Participatory scenario development
The participatory scenario development in Matsch valley not only
provided plausible land-use scenarios, but also provoked an interdisci-
plinary and cross-sectoral dialog and supported the development of a
shared understanding of the complex SES. By applying cross-
disciplinary cooperation and knowledge transfer between stakeholders
and researchers from social and natural science we gained a deep in-
sight into the dynamic and complex human-water system of the Matsch
valley and enhanced the probability of evaluating possible future land
use changes (e.g. Hanspach et al., 2014). Discussing the storylines
with local stakeholders verified the plausibility and consistency and fur-
ther initiated a lively discussion during the workshop. Such dialogues
are reported to support sustainable regional development (Basco-
Carrera et al., 2017; Allington et al., 2018). Furthermore, the consider-
ation of local, spatially explicit dynamics contributed by stakeholders
during the participatory process greatly enhanced the downscaling pro-
cess (Vannier et al., 2019). Although the approach shows a high demand
on time and labor (Kohler et al., 2017), it could also be applied in any
other areas to map possible future land use developments.
4.5. Interpretation of the simulation results
As water demand in the Matsch valley is low in the winter, the catch-
ment is not prone to the risk of water scarcity from October to April.
However, a higher risk of water scarcity occurs in the months of May
and June, when snow melt in the uppermost regions of the catchment
is still small, while irrigation demand is already high. To a certain extent,
the amount of irrigation water is automatically regulated within the SES
because the irrigation manager reacts to imminent water scarcity not
only of the farmers, but also of hotels and inhabitants; a feature which
is implemented in Aqua.MORE. In all applied scenarios irrigation
water was increased with the extent of the increase being dependent
from the scenario-specific land use changes by the farmers. Hence, the
macro-scale system behaviour emerged from the interactions of the in-
dividual agents, which is the core concept of agent-based modelling.
The evaluation of the actual water stress in Matsch valley is quite
challenging, because no clear limits are established for the applied
high spatial and temporal resolution. The withdrawal-to-availability
ratio (Raskin et al., 1996) is usually applied to national scales and indi-
cates a country being ‘water stressed’ if annual withdrawals are be-
tween 20% and 40% of annual freshwater supply and ‘severely
stressed’ if this figure exceeds 40% (Falkenmark et al., 2007; Damkjaer
and Taylor, 2017). These thresholds can not directly be applied to our
study due to two reasons: (1) We do not consider actual withdrawal,
but rather demand (e.g. not considering distribution losses) and (2) lit-
erature gives no thresholds for daily evaluations at catchment scale.
9
Science of the Total Environment 755 (2021) 142962
Here, we would like to stress that it is important to also consider the
maintenance of appropriate amounts of residual water flow in order
to fulfil ecological requirements (Kajfež-Bogataj et al., 2009). With this
background information, we can conclude that we should carefully
monitor situations with D:S of more than 20%. These only occurred on
several days in scenarios T + c, P + c and N + c, thereby reflecting
the strong fluctuations in both supply and demand during the year in
the case study area, a typical feature of Alpine catchment areas that
has already been emphasised in previous studies (Vanham et al.,
2008; Brunner et al., 2019a). Although the limited number of days
with D:S ratio exceeding 20% in our study does not represent a high
threat to the water resources in the Matsch valley, we reinforced the im-
portance of analysing water scarcity at the daily temporal scale to not to
overlook these critical days. Our results indicate the significance of arti-
ficial reservoirs (Brunner et al., 2019a) to bridge the critical days at the
beginning of the irrigation period. These findings can also be used to
stimulate management processes and stakeholder dialogues for sus-
tainable watershed management (Huber et al., 2019).
A D:S ratio of more than 20%, however, was only reached in scenar-
ios that consider climate change, indicating its high relevance (Zierl and
Bugmann, 2005; Zhang et al., 2016). Similar findings have been re-
ported by Zhang et al. (2016) who showed for a headwater catchment
in Northwest China that climate changes tend to affect the hydrological
regimes much more prominently than land use changes. Also the find-
ing that irrigation demand is significant for water stress agrees to previ-
ous studies: e.g. Weingartner et al. (2014) showed for a region in the
Swiss Alps that the combination of the different runoff patterns and
the higher irrigation demands due to climate change can enhance the
pressure on water resources, especially in the summer months. In con-
trast to our results, however, they found highest D:S ratios in the late
summer (August and September).
4.6. Management implications
In order to be able to manage the water resources to competing de-
mands, data sharing and integration need to be enhanced across the
sectors. In Alpine regions, drinking water supply systems are character-
ized by small structured infrastructures, which are supplied by thou-
sands of local water companies in a decentralised manner (Vanham
et al., 2008; EEA, 2009). Moreover, the water abstraction for artificial
snowmaking, tourism and irrigation are often not connected to the pub-
lic system at all, rather coming from surface water and private wells.
Hence, monitoring the current water demand and the demand changes
is challenging. Surface and groundwater monitoring networks are also
incomplete (EEA, 2009). Considering the potential impacts of climate
change on water resources and the increasing water demand, future
water resource management should follow a supply and demand man-
agement approach, aiming at technological as well as behavioural solu-
tions (EEA, 2009). Technological solutions, on the one hand, cover the
construction of water reservoirs (Brunner et al., 2019a), improved irri-
gation (Jägermeyr et al., 2015) and artificial snow-making techniques
(Grünewald and Wolfsperger, 2019). Behavioural solutions, on the
other hand, aim at influencing water demand and water-use practices
based on information and education (Levidow et al., 2014; Koop et al.,
2019) or legal water use restrictions (e.g. by water concessions). Agri-
cultural long-term measures, such as improving land-use and livestock
structures towards more efficient and water saving systems, require an
inclusion in long-term strategies, objectives and programmes, e.g. in the
EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) strategies (Wagner et al., 2012).
5. Conclusion
We assume that water scarcity problems and conflicts of competing
water use sectors, similar to our case study site, will increase in many Al-
pine areas due to climate change and changes in land use, land manage-
ment and tourism. The transdisciplinary approach of integrating
L. Huber, J. Rüdisser, C. Meisch et al.
(1) annual runoff data provided by a large-scale water yield model (e.g.
InVEST), (2) locally measured runoff data, and (3) land-use change
scenarios derived from stakeholder workshops with an ABM has proved
to be applicable and successful in predicting potential water scarcity for
future scenarios. In the future, water resource managers in the Alps
should regionally analyse the supply and demand on a refined temporal
scale to indicate early on any potential water scarcity or user conflicts
and hence enable a sustainable catchment management, applying tech-
nological as well as behavioural solutions.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Lisa Huber: Writing - original draft, Conceptualization, Software, Vi-
sualization, Data curation, Formal analysis. Johannes Rüdisser: Writing
- review & editing, Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data
curation. Claude Meisch: Methodology, Formal analysis. Rike Stotten:
Methodology, Formal analysis. Georg Leitinger: Supervision, Funding
acquisition, Project administration, Conceptualization. Ulrike
Tappeiner: Supervision, Funding acquisition, Project administration,
Conceptualization.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The LTSER site ‘Val Mazia/Matschertal’ belongs to the national and
international Long-Term Ecological Research Networks (LTER-Italy,
LTER-Europe and ILTER). LH, JR, GL and UT are part of the Interdisciplin-
ary Research Center ‘Ecology of the Alpine Region’ within the major re-
search focus ‘Alpine Space - Man and Environment’ at the University of
Innsbruck. Ethics consent were obtained from participants for all inter-
views and workshops. We acknowledge the exceptional participation
by farmers from Matsch valley, thank Markus Schermer for facilitation
of the stakeholder workshop and are indepted to Giacomo Bertoldi,
Georg Niedrist and Alberto Scotti from Eurac research for sharing their
knowledge about water supply and water users in Matsch valley.
Funding
This research was financially supported by the Austrian Federal Min-
istry of Science, Research and Economy with the HRSM-cooperation
project KLIMAGRO.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Detailed model description following the updated ‘Overview, Design
concepts and Details’ protocol (ODD) as well as the software can
be downloaded from https://www.comses.net/codebase-release/
6be4a0ef-0144-4125-9f30-1dbc0323cfb7/ (running of the model re-
quires NetLogo 6.0.4 or higher).
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