Heat stress provokes thermal discomfort to people living in semiarid and arid climates. This study evaluates thermal discomfort levels, building design concepts, and some heat mitigation strategies in low-income neighborhoods of Faisalabad, Pakistan. The outdoor and indoor weather data are collected from April to August 2016 using a weather station installed ad hoc in urban settings, and the 52 houses of the five low-income participating communities living in congested and less environment-friendly areas of Faisalabad. The discomfort index values, related to the building design concepts, including (i) house orientation to sunlight and (ii) house ventilation, are calculated from outdoor and indoor dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures. Our results show that although June was the hottest month of summer 2016, based on the monthly mean temperature of the Faisalabad region, the month of May produced the highest discomfort levels, which were higher in houses exposed to sunlight and without ventilation. The study also identifies some popular heat mitigation strategies adopted by the five participating low-income communities during various heat-related health complaints. The strategies are gender-biased and have medical, cultural/customary backgrounds. For example, about 52% of the males and 28% of the females drank more water during dehydration, diarrhea, and eye infection. Over 11% and 19% of the males and females, respectively, moved to cooler places during fever. About 43% of the males and 51% of the females took water showers and rested to combat flu (runny nose), headache, and nosebleed. The people did not know how to cure muscular fatigue, skin allergy (from a type of Milia), and mild temperature. Planting trees in an area and developing open parks with greenery and thick canopy trees can be beneficial for neighborhoods resembling those evaluated in this study.

The basic objective of the irrigation reforms, i.e., participatory irrigation management in Pakistan, was a better economic and financial management of irrigation service delivery, equity in water distribution, and better environmental outcome. The aim of this study was to assess the optimism with the reforms package that has actually delivered expected outcomes. For this purpose, this study used a cross-sectional dataset of 567 farmers in five selected Area Water Boards (AWBs) of Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan. Important institutional features including compliance, adaptiveness, clarity of objectives, good interaction, and appropriate scale, were modeled through structural equation modeling on the overall performance assessment of water use associations from a farmer’s perspective. Results suggested that clear objectives, adaptiveness, scale, and compliance show a strong relationship with an overall assessment of performance. While good interaction has not impacted significantly with an overall performance assessment. The impact of institutional feature on the overall performance assessment depends on the nature of performance considered, e.g., drivers of the economic performance of a farmer organization may not be the same as the drivers of its environmental performance. Besides offering insights on specific drivers that matter for a particular dimension of the institutional performance of farmer organizations, the study suggests that participatory irrigation management institutions are still in infancy even after decades of their introduction, and just creating institutions is neither mandatory nor sufficient. Furthermore, the institutional designs are considered critical for the success of participatory institutions. Therefore, there is a need to consider the conformity of the strategies with the existing norms and compliance to the on-going procedures.

Based on the perceptions of the local farmers, this study aims to assess the effects of socioeconomic factors and climatic change on the groundwater livelihood system, with a particular focus on in situ Persian wheels/dug wells. Farmers’ perceptions of climate change and how it is affecting their way of life in the Soan River Basin have also been evaluated to determine the most appropriate adaptive interventions. Information and literature about dug wells was unavailable, which stressed the need to carry out this survey. A structured close-ended questionnaire was designed and administered with as much quantitative data as possible. Random sampling opted for a 5 km buffer zone across the Soan River and its tributaries. Union councils having more than 50% of their area lying in the buffer zone were surveyed, and data was collected. Fifty UCs fell within this criterion, and six dug wells from each Union Council were surveyed. The results of our survey collecting local farmer’s perceptions determined that about 70% of respondents agreed about climate change in the Soan Basin of Pakistan, and 62% of farmers reported that climate change severely impacted their livelihood by affecting agricultural productivity and water availability. Ninety-two percent reported summer becoming hot, 72% highlighted that winters are becoming less cold, and 96% reported that average annual rainfall has decreased compared to 10 years before. About 72% of respondents indicated that available water in their dug wells had decreased, and 80% of respondents explained that their crop yield had decreased compared to 10 years before. Sixty percent preferred drip and 35% sprinkler irrigation as efficient water management practices to cope with water shortages. Ninety-five percent of farmers were ready to use solar pumps for irrigation to tame high pumping costs. The study recommends integrating solar pumping with drip and sprinkler irrigation systems to enhance farmers’ cropped area and productivity. These vulnerable farmers can enhance their resilience and profitability by adopting high-value agriculture (tunnel farming, off-season vegetables, etc.) instead of conventional crops.

The ground validation of satellite-based precipitation products (SPPs) is very important for their hydroclimatic application. This study evaluated the performance assessment of four soil moisture-based SPPs (SM2Rain, SM2Rain- ASCAT, SM2Rain-CCI, and GPM-SM2Rain). All data of SPPs were compared with 64 weather stations in Pakistan from January 2005 to December 2020. All SPPs estimations were evaluated on daily, monthly, seasonal, and yearly scales, over the whole spatial domain, and at point-to-pixel scale. Widely used evaluation indices (root mean square error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (CC), bias, and relative bias (rBias)) along with categorical indices (false alarm ratio (FAR), probability of detection (POD), success ratio (SR), and critical success index (CSI) were evaluated for performance analysis. The results of our study signposted that: (1) On a monthly scale, all SPPs estimations were in better agreement with gauge estimations as compared to daily scales. Moreover, SM2Rain and GPM-SM2Rain products accurately traced the spatio-temporal variability with CC >0.7 and rBIAS within the acceptable range (±10) of the whole country. (2) On a seasonal scale (spring, summer, winter, and autumn), GPM-SM2Rain performed more satisfactorily as compared to all other SPPs. (3) All SPPs performed better at capturing light precipitation events, as indicated by the Probability Density Function (PDF); however, in the summer season, all SPPs displayed considerable over/underestimates with respect to PDF (%). Moreover, GPM-SM2RAIN beat all other SPPs in terms of probability of detection. Consequently, we suggest the daily and monthly use of GPM-SM2Rain and SM2Rain for hydro climate applications in a semi-arid climate zone (Pakistan).

Rainwater and underground aquifers are the main sources of irrigation in the Soan River Basin in the Potohar region. Due to climate change, low precipitation rates shrink the underground aquifers and intensify the water and energy demand for irrigation. This study aimed to address water scarcity and energy shortage issues by measuring farmers’ willingness to adopt solar-driven drip irrigation systems (SDDIS) in Union Council Ganj, Chakri, District Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The logit model was used to determine the willingness to uptake SDDIS. A survey tool was used to gather data from 141 randomly sampled farmers. The important factors affecting the adoption decision include age, status of the individual in family, number of land parcels, ownership status of the land, depth of water, agriculture as a primary source of income, the demonstration effect on adoption, knowledge of how to use, and the influence of government subsidies on adoption. The research suggests that the government should extend its project to raise awareness among the population about on-farm water and energy-efficient technologies by developing further demonstration sites for farmers. In addition, the authorities should increase grants to help farmers adopt SDDIS.