Fukuda et al. (2026) Attribution of Future Water Stress in a Two‐Way Coupled Socioeconomic–Hydrological Framework

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Hydrological Processes
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-08-01
• Authors: Tetsuya Fukuda, Yuichi Muto, Takao Yoshikane, Tomoko Nitta, Hiroaki Kawata, Kei Yoshimura
• DOI: 10.1002/hyp.70667

Research Groups

• Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona
• Institute for Advanced Study in Water Management, Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Global Change Research Centre, Czech Republic

Short Summary

This study developed a two-way coupled socioeconomic-hydrological framework to capture dynamic feedbacks between water demand and hydrological processes. The framework was used to decompose future changes in water stress into socioeconomic and hydrological contributions.

Objective

• Investigate the impact of coupled socioeconomic-hydrological feedbacks on global water scarcity under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) scenarios.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global, with a focus on geopolitical regions and sub-basins.
• Temporal Scale: Century-scale simulations from 2020 to 2100.

Methodology and Data

• Models used:
  • Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM)
  • Integrated Land Simulator (ILS)
• Data sources:
  • Satellite data for land-use changes
  • Reanalysis datasets for hydrological variables

Main Results

• The coupled framework maintained statistically consistent performance in reproducing global water withdrawals and agricultural prices.
• Roughly 80% of global geopolitical sub-basin area exhibits increases in water stress across all four SSPs and RCP scenarios.
• Hydrological change is the dominant contribution to future water stress under SSP3–7.0 and SSP5–8.5.

Contributions

• This study provides a foundation for dynamic, region-specific water resources management under future SSPs and RCP scenarios by capturing coupled socioeconomic-hydrological feedbacks.

Funding

• This research was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. [insert grant number]) and the National Science Foundation of China (grant numbers [insert grant numbers]).

Citation

@article{Fukuda2026Attribution,
  author = {Fukuda, Tetsuya and Muto, Yuichi and Yoshikane, Takao and Nitta, Tomoko and Kawata, Hiroaki and Yoshimura, Kei},
  title = {Attribution of Future Water Stress in a Two‐Way Coupled Socioeconomic–Hydrological Framework},
  journal = {Hydrological Processes},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1002/hyp.70667},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.70667}
}