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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-2016</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Behavioral feedbacks reshape blue&amp;ndash;green water scarcity and sustainability trade-offs in irrigated agriculture: A sociohydrological perspective</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lu</surname>
<given-names>Youzhen</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhang</surname>
<given-names>Shengqian</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wu</surname>
<given-names>Mengyang</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Adamowski</surname>
<given-names>Jan F.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Cao</surname>
<given-names>Xinchun</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9369-3963</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>College of Agricultural Science and Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Department of Bioresource Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural &amp; Environmental Sciences, McGill University, Québec H9X 3V9, Canada</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>10</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>30</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Youzhen Lu et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2016/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2016/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2016/egusphere-2026-2016.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-2016/egusphere-2026-2016.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Blue&amp;ndash;green water scarcity in irrigation districts is influenced by both hydrological processes and farmer management, yet most studies treat agricultural decision-making as exogenous and static. We develop a spatially explicit, bidirectionally coupled framework integrating Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) with an agent-based model (ABM) of boundedly rational farmers, embedding crop choice and irrigation scheduling within basin-scale hydrology and crop growth. Applied to the Yaohekou Irrigation District in the Han River Basin, China, the model quantifies how behavioral heterogeneity and management portfolios affect blue&amp;ndash;green water use, irrigation supply adequacy, ecological-flow pressure, and equitable water access in the water&amp;ndash;ecology&amp;ndash;food&amp;ndash;society (WEFS) nexus. The district shows persistent supply&amp;ndash;demand gaps and strong sensitivity to behavior. Profit-driven regimes concentrate cropping and synchronize irrigation during critical stages, increasing dry-year peak blue-water withdrawals, shrinking safety margins, and amplifying drought-time deficits and inequity. Conservative social-learning regimes maintain crop diversity and stagger demand, buffering drought impacts. Policy experiments show that supply augmentation alone is partly absorbed by demand catch-up (diminishing returns); uniform water-price increases raise efficiency but reduce equity via heterogeneous responses; combining efficiency improvements with moderate supply support lowers water use per unit output and dampens sensitivity during wet-to-dry transitions. Overall, sustainable management should target the chain of demand synchronization, peak extraction, and constraint triggering, supported by technology diffusion and protective mechanisms to build socially inclusive resilience.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="30"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>52479038</award-id>
<award-id>52309049</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province</funding-source>
<award-id>(BK20230969</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs3">
<funding-source>Central Universities in China</funding-source>
<award-id>B240205046</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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