Modeling arid/semi-arid irrigated agricultural watersheds with SWAT: Applications, challenges, and solution strategies

We review over twenty years of publications on Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) applications in arid/semi-arid irrigated agricultural watersheds. Our review reveals strict dominance of the model's use for better understanding water quantity aspects of water management. While this is to be expected given the reality of water scarcity and associated challenges for agricultural production systems in arid/semi-arid regions, the capabilities of SWAT to model water quality have been underutilized. The main modeling challenges are lack of observational data, poor data quality, concerns about simulation accuracy, and technical limitations of the model despite numerous advancements in the last two decades. To deal with these challenges, [...]