Climate Change, Water Supply, and Agriculture in the Arid Western United States: Eighty Years of Agricultural Census Observations from Idaho

Authors

Zeynep K. Hansen, Boise State UniversityFollow
Scott Lowe, Boise State UniversityFollow
Wenchao Xu, Xiamen University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-26-2015

Abstract

As the population and agricultural development in the U.S. expanded west throughout the 20^th century, major water infrastructure projects were initiated in order to meet irrigation demand and to reduce the risk and uncertainty associated with highly variable water supplies.² Agriculture in the arid and semi-arid western U.S. is particularly vulnerable to variability in water supply, and has evolved to rely heavily on major water infrastructure projects.³ In 2007, of the 57 million acres of irrigated cropland and pastureland in the U.S., nearly three-quarters was in the 17 western-most contiguous states; in 2008, irrigated agriculture applied 91.2 million acre-feet of water, with over four-fifths being used in the arid west.

Copyright Statement

This document was originally published by Australian National University (Global Water Forum) in Global Water Forum. This work is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Details regarding the use of this work can be found at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

This document was originally published with the author name: Scott Low.

Publication Information

Hansen, Zeynep K.; Lowe, Scott; and Xu, Wenchao. (2015). "Climate Change, Water Supply, and Agriculture in the Arid Western United States: Eighty Years of Agricultural Census Observations from Idaho". Global Water Forum.