Model Application for Sustainable Agricultural Water Use

Jaehak Jeong,Xuesong Zhang

doi:10.3390/agronomy10030396

Abstract

With the growing population and climate change, increasing demands for water are intensifying competition between agricultural stakeholders. Since the mid-20th century, numerous crop models and modeling techniques have emerged for the quantitative assessment of cropping systems. This article introduces a collection of articles that explore current research in model applications for sustainable agricultural water use. The collection includes articles from model development to regional and field-scale applications addressing management effects, model uncertainty, irrigation decision support systems, and new methods for simulating salt balances. Further work is needed to integrate data science, modern sensor systems, and remote sensing technologies with the models in order to investigate the sustainability of agricultural systems in regions affected by land-use change and climate change.

Highlights

Water is an essential, but limited, resource on Earth which is required to grow crops
The increasing frequency of extreme climatic conditions, combined with agricultural intensification occurring at different speeds, is making it more difficult to sustain agricultural water use [2]
To meet the goals of feeding a growing world population while mitigating the negative environmental effects of agriculture, it is crucial to advance the science and knowledge of soil–water–crop systems in order to provide information for efficient decision making by producers and water managers

Summary

Introduction

But limited, resource on Earth which is required to grow crops. Process-based CSMs simulate the growth and development of crops using historical (or projected) weather, local soil properties, and management details such as planting/harvesting date, fertilizer/irrigation amounts, and tillage dates. They have been widely adopted by the research community to evaluate the effects of climate change, climatic anomalies, and management decisions upon crop yield and/or environmental effects of cropping practices (e.g., [4,5,6,7]). This article introduces the Model Application for Sustainable Agricultural Water Use Special Issue, published in the Agronomy journal. The wide-spanning topics covered demonstrate the continuing development and versatility of CSMs, which make them more predictively credible and fill gaps in knowledge and modeling capacity

Agronomic and Environmental Effects of Agricultural Managements

CSMs as a Decision Tool

Uncertainty Analysis