Sustainable water resource planning at the basin scale with simultaneous goals of agricultural development and wetland conservation

Abstract Reducing the quantity of water in recent years has increased competition between development projects and environment. Wetlands are increasingly under pressure due to human activities. The most serious threats wetlands excessive agriculture diversion for irrigation. In years, shortage drought, wetland dryness Iran caused many problems, including dust crisis. Therefore, planning at basin scale is necessary achieve sustainable development, which emphasizes employment mathematical models. this study, using a reliability-based simulation–optimization approach, Karkheh with following two objectives investigated: (1) total area cultivation agricultural sectors (2) supply reliability environmental flow requirement. Water Evaluation Planning (WEAP) model used simulation resources multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm employed optimization. results show that addition significantly improving requirement (from 55 79%), design been optimized. prevented unsustainable developments basin. Also, average demands from 51% (in previous studies) 72%.