Abstract
In recent decades, water scarcity has become a frequent and widespread phenomenon. Intensification of water scarcity will have economic impact on the main water-using sectors. The highest pressure on the water resources is exerted by agriculture. Irrigation is the largest consumer of the agriculture sector and the efficient use of water is of utmost importance. The aim of this study is to explore the capability of an innovative platform that combines Earth Observation data, weather forecasts and numerical simulations to plan more precisely water allocation in space and time in the irrigated agriculture. This platform, created in the framework of MOSES, provides in Romania short-term irrigation forecasts adapted to the hydrological behavior of alluvial soils specific to the Lower Danube Floodplain. The short-term irrigation forecasts have been tested with applied water volumes and in situ water resources measurements in order to assess the water allocation in the irrigated agriculture. Although irrigation forecast was run operationally only one crop year (2017–2018), in the framework of MOSES Project, the comparison revealed that the irrigation scheduling in this area is more influenced by the infrastructure characteristics and less by the spatial distribution of crop water needs and availability of water resources. Our results show that short-term irrigation forecasts accompanied by real time monitoring of water resources could be successfully used in the irrigation scheduling activity for improving water allocation in space and time in the irrigated agriculture.
Highlights
In the Communication on Water Scarcity and Droughts adopted in July 2007, the Commission mentioned that water scarcity and drought is an increasingly frequent and widespread phenomenon inWater 2020, 12, 520; doi:10.3390/w12020520 www.mdpi.com/journal/waterWater 2020, 12, 520 the European Union [1]
In the framework of the MOSES (Managing crOp water Saving with Enterprise Services) project, an integrated decision support system (DSS) was created that is devoted to irrigation water agencies and consortia, combining a wide range of data and technological resources: Earth Observation (EO) data, probabilistic seasonal forecasting and numerical weather predictions, crop water requirements and irrigation modelling, providing daily forecasts for improving water allocation in the irrigated agriculture in four demonstration areas located in Italy, Spain, Romania and Morocco
In the context of the aforementioned considerations, the purpose of this study is to explore the capability of MOSES DSS to provide information about spatial and temporal water allocation at the scale of farms and irrigation district located in the Embanked Great Island of Danube River, Brăila, in the South-East of Romania
Summary
In the Communication on Water Scarcity and Droughts adopted in July 2007, the Commission mentioned that water scarcity and drought is an increasingly frequent and widespread phenomenon in. The soil sensors are very useful for continuous soil water content monitoring, but require laboratory calibration [19,20] All these approaches present specific limitations and, an efficient DSS should be based on their combination in order to be able to provide valuable information for planning more precisely the water irrigation in space and time. In the framework of the MOSES (Managing crOp water Saving with Enterprise Services) project (financed by the European Union’s H2020 Research and Innovation Programme), an integrated decision support system (DSS) was created that is devoted to irrigation water agencies and consortia, combining a wide range of data and technological resources: EO data, probabilistic seasonal forecasting and numerical weather predictions, crop water requirements and irrigation modelling, providing daily forecasts for improving water allocation in the irrigated agriculture in four demonstration areas located in Italy, Spain, Romania and Morocco.
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