The wave of modernization and globalization in the last century has rapidly involved a technological paradigm shift from indigenous irrigation water systems to modern systems in arid regions. Despite interest in the drought resilience of indigenous water systems, the impact of this paradigm shift on drought resilience remains poorly understood because previous studies have focused on fixed irrigation water systems. To fill this gap, we investigated the drought resilience of an indigenous and modern irrigation water system that coexists in the drought-prone Mahaweli H region of the Sri Lankan dry zone. To explain drought resilience, we quantified the historical irrigation system performance (1985–2021) of both water systems using the water duty indicator (i.e., the volume of water required to cultivate a unit land area). The statistical Pettitt test was used to detect significant change points in the time series of water duty, and we divided the time line into few periods based on the change points. Furthermore, a quantitative trend analysis of several socio-hydrological variables and a qualitative analysis of their socio-hydrological backgrounds with triggers of water duty were conducted to explain drought resilience path dependency in modern and indigenous water systems. The results indicated a higher drought resilience is embedded in the indigenous system as the mean water duty increment in drought years compared to non-drought years is 16.4% for the indigenous system and 58.3% for the modern system. In addition, drought resilience pathways that elucidated by water duty change points also demonstrated that indigenous water system features a higher drought resilience compared to the modern water system. The findings of this comparative study can contribute to the design of drought resilience improvement strategies in arid region irrigation water systems in a more comprehensive manner.

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本土灌溉水系统的抗旱能力评估：以斯里兰卡干旱地区为例

上个世纪的现代化和全球化浪潮迅速引发了干旱地区从本土灌溉水系统向现代系统的技术范式转变。尽管人们对本土水系统的抗旱能力很感兴趣，但这种范式转变对抗旱能力的影响仍然知之甚少，因为之前的研究主要集中在固定灌溉水系统上。为了填补这一空白，我们调查了斯里兰卡干旱地区干旱多发的 Mahaweli H 地区共存的本土和现代灌溉水系统的抗旱能力。为了解释抗旱能力，我们使用水责任指标（即耕种单位土地面积所需的水量）量化了两个水系统的历史灌溉系统绩效（1985-2021）。采用统计Pettit检验来检测水负荷时间序列中的显着变化点，并根据变化点将时间线划分为几个时段。此外，还对几个社会水文变量进行了定量趋势分析，并对触发水责任的社会水文背景进行了定性分析，以解释现代和本土水系统的抗旱路径依赖性。结果表明，本土系统具有更高的抗旱能力，与非干旱年份相比，本土系统在干旱年份的平均水税增量为 16.4%，而现代系统为 58.3%。此外，通过水责任变化点阐明的抗旱途径也表明，与现代水系统相比，本土水系统具有更高的抗旱能力。这项比较研究的结果有助于更全面地设计干旱地区灌溉水系统的抗旱能力改善策略。