Integrated Decision Support for Sustainable and Profitable Land Management in the Lowlands of Central Asia

Land use and crop production in the Khorezm region in western Uzbekistan, exemplarily for the irrigated lowlands of Central Asia, are challenged by the excessive, non-sustainable use of irrigation water and repeated water shortages on one hand, and soil degradation by secondary salinization on the other hand. One of the research objectives of the German-Uzbek Khorezm project, funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and led by Center of Development Research (ZEF) of Bonn University, was to better understand options for land use and choice of technology at the farm level in order to evaluate and propose technological alternatives and agricultural policy options for sustainable land use. To address these issues, a Farm-Level Economic Ecological Optimization Model (FLEOM) was developed as an integrated decision-support tool capable of optimizing land and resource use at the level of large farms and water user associations, while at the same time assessing the respective economic and environmental impacts at the micro-scale. This chapter provides a brief introduction to characteristics of FLEOM and the necessary steps and studies related to the generation of its database. Based on a comprehensive system-understanding composed by a range of agronomic and socioeconomic studies carried out in the project, the model captures the basic features of the regional agriculture and the interrelations of production activities most prevalent to the local farmers. It comprises regionally specified input–output parameters and conditions of land and water use. The flexibility of the model allows the addition of new crops, the modification of socio-economic parameters in a user-friendly way, such as to simulate changes in socio-economic and production environments, securing a wide range of its possible uses in the future. FLEOM builds on linear programming optimization routine and a comprehensive agronomic database established with the cropping system simulation model (CropSyst) using field experience and knowledge of a range of agronomic and hydrological studies of the project. A graphical user-interface programmed in Java provides the model’s easy usability, by which settings and results are visualized in tables and figures or as maps via a GIS-environment. The model works in three steps: first, the model sets and imports an agronomic database. Next, the agronomic database together with socio-economic information goes through an optimization process in the General Algebraic Modeling Software (GAMS). Finally, the model transfers the results into easily understandable tables, figures and maps.