Abstract
The horticultural industry in Victoria is currently experiencing significant structural pressures due to a range of issues, including water constraints through the introduction of Sustainable Diversion Limits (SDL's), access to productive land and infrastructure, climate change and competition with overseas imports. Bio-economic models such as the Victorian Water Policy Model enable policy makers to explore scenarios which aim to optimize agricultural productivity and the trade-offs between various agricultural industries and regions under a series of water availability and physical constraints. However, the current data-sets which populate these models such as land-use, irrigation demand and production estimates are often sparse and not frequently updated. This paper discusses the design and implementation of an automated process to provide enhanced estimates of irrigated water use across the horticultural industries of northern Victoria. The service derives regional crop coefficient relationships for the horticultural industries using SEBAL-METRIC estimates of Evapotranspiration, Penman-Monteith estimates of potential evaporation and calculated Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from the Landsat-8 satellite. Application of the crop coefficient relationships provides estimates of crop evapotranspiration rates and irrigation water use over time. Automated reports for each horticultural industry within the water-trading-zones of the northern Victoria irrigation districts provide information on the distribution of crop coefficient curves, irrigation area, estimated evapotranspiration and water application. This information is critical for water resource management and to support physically-based biophysical models. It is anticipated that over time the service will also provide information on land-use transition and the adaptation of irrigation practices to changes in water availability.
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