Irrigation In Spain Research Articles

Water for Whom? Unravelling the Allocation of Water Storage Capacity between Irrigation and Electricity Uses in Spain during the 20th Century

This work explores the intricate dynamics of water management, energy generation, and irrigation in Spain by examining the evolving regulatory framework governing water resource allocation. It introduces a novel approach to quantify water usage and unpacks the ‘mixed uses’ category for the first time, focusing on entities holding water allocation concessions rather than mere dam ownership. Our f indings reveal the profound influence of private electricity companies on water resource management, despite the significant portion of state-owned dams. The results point to hydroelectric dominance in water allocation and underscore the complex interaction between public ownership and private management of electric companies. This research emphasises the need for nuanced policy considerations in the broader context of energy and agriculture while contributing to a richer understanding of Spain’s unique water governance landscape.

Agricultural irrigation development in Castilla y León (Spain): driving forces and outcomes for landscape and sustainability in the 21st century

ContextAgriculture relies on irrigation in many parts of the world, and the need for irrigation is increasing due to rising demands for agricultural products and climate change-induced alterations in rainfall patterns. However, irrigated agriculture has been found to damage ecosystems and threaten landscape sustainability.ObjectivesAgainst this background, there has been a recent development towards large-scale irrigation in Spain. The aim of this study is to understand this development at the landscape level and its impact in the context of landscape sustainability.MethodsWe focused on two study sites in Castilla y León using a mixed-methods approach. We studied driving forces, landscape changes, and sustainability outcomes through document analysis, interviews, and aerial photograph analysis.ResultsThe development of a landscape-level underground pipe network took place at one study site and is planned for the second study site. Interviewees perceived institutional and social driving forces as particularly influential and technological driving forces as less influential. Political and economic driving forces were often interlinked. The irrigation development tied to land consolidation led to landscape changes, such as the removal of trees and increases in field size. Thus, in terms of environmental sustainability, trade-offs were found, while social sustainability outcomes were mainly positive. The impact on farmers’ economic security varied.ConclusionsFor further landscape-level irrigation developments, we recommend integrating preserving seminatural habitats and the structural diversity of the agricultural landscape in planning processes. We also recommend a shift towards more water efficient crops, evapotranspiration management, and a new funding scheme for farmers to offset rising electricity costs.

Using reclaimed water to cope with water scarcity: an alternative for agricultural irrigation in Spain

In water-stressed agricultural regions, reuse of reclaimed water has emerged as a promising alternative that improves supply reliability, alleviates water scarcity and contributes to circular economy. The European Union has recently launched several initiatives to facilitate the adoption of water reuse for irrigation. However, its adoption is still far below its potential in most areas. This is the case of the Western La Mancha aquifer, in central Spain, where reclaimed water reuse is considered an alternative source to groundwater that may contribute to reduce overexploitation. A stakeholder-based fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) was developed to provide insights into the current situation of reclaimed water reuse in this area, as well as to explore the outcomes of different simulated scenarios (cost recovery, agricultural transformation, social awareness and political will increase). The FCM-based dynamic simulations showed that political will increase would generate the highest increase of reclaimed water reuse in agriculture in the study area, providing the highest increase of water reuse in agriculture. Agricultural extensification and increased social awareness delivered similar positive outcomes, however, only public awareness campaigns would increase water reuse, with agricultural extensification outcomes being more oriented towards the reduction of water abstractions and pollution. The cost recovery scenario was the only one that resulted in non-desired changes, mainly caused by reduced farmers’ income due to higher costs of reclaimed water. Finally, the analysis also evidenced the key role that the newly enacted EU Water Reuse Regulation may play in promoting reclaimed water use, even reversing the negative outcomes of the cost recovery scenario.

RECLAMO: Unlocking the potential of wastewater reuse for agricultural irrigation in Spain

Increasing water scarcity is encouraging the use of unconventional water resources. In recent years, the European Union has launched numerous initiatives to promote and facilitate water reuse for agricultural irrigation. Today, the use of reclaimed water for agriculture has become an alternative, reliable and safe source of water supply and an indispensable water planning tool, especially in the area of southern Europe. However, water reuse for irrigation is currently far below its potential. Numerous barriers prevent its development and call for a detailed analysis of the different aspects affecting reclaimed water reuse, through an integrated and multidisciplinary approach. A multidisciplinary research team from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, consisting of agronomists, hydrologists, chemists and agricultural economists, will work on the RECLAMO Project (https://blogs.upm.es/reclamo/), with the aim of providing solutions and recommendations aimed at promoting the full development and use of reclaimed water for irrigation in areas of Spain with marked water stress. For this purpose, project activities will be developed in two selected case studies (the Segura Basin, leader in water reuse in Spain and the Guadiana Basin, with success stories, but low levels of water reuse) and organised according to five axes: 1) development of a comprehensive knowledge-base covering the regulatory, technical, socio-economic and environmental aspects of reclaimed water reuse in agriculture; 2) participatory development of future scenarios exploring possible strategies, barriers and opportunities, in relation to the expansion of the use of reclaimed water for irrigation; 3) impact analysis of the strategies identified at different scales (crop, farm, (sub-)basin), through the development of an integrated modelling platform (hydrologic-agronomic-economic models); 4) Development of a roadmap and policy recommendations to achieve the full development and use of reclaimed water reuse for irrigation; 5) Dissemination of knowledge and promotion of science-policy-society dialogue. To this end, RECLAMO will collaborate closely with experts and stakeholder groups that will play a key role in the project in co-creating the scenarios and modelling tools and validating the results. The project will also seek for synergies and complementarities with other similar projects and explore new ways of collaborating with companies and research groups that allow research to continue and expand beyond the spatial and temporal limits of the project. RECLAMO’s results will promote an integrated approach to the sustainable management of water resources in water-stressed areas, including reclaimed water management. The integrated modelling platform developed in the project will allow policy-makers and water users to benefit from an improved understanding of the interactions between the social, economic and environmental aspects of water systems, in the context of climate and socio-economic change that will lead to better informed decision-making to address future water challenges. In addition, RECLAMO is expected to contribute to raising awareness about the use of reclaimed water reuse in agriculture as a safe and sustainable practice and to improve its social acceptance by producing science-based knowledge that provide evidence on the benefits derived from its use.

Risks Identification and Management Related to Rural Innovation Projects through Social Networks Analysis: A Case Study in Spain

Risk identification and management are essential in innovation projects in the rural context, where cultural differences and relations between actors are decisive for assuring a project success. Risk management is especially important when considering innovation processes in rural areas that experience conflict or are lagging in development. Although there are studies focusing on the interaction of actors, there are only a few that approach the risks associated with stakeholders. This research aims to identify the risks and the associated stakeholders and draws on a risk map in order to develop effective risk management and action plans to mitigate risk. A rural project optimizing irrigation in Spain was taken as a case study and conduct semi-structural interviews with key actors were conducted. Social Network Analysis (SNA) was applied to recognize and investigate the network of stakeholder-associated risk factors. The main risks identified in the project were associated with technical, economic, and time problems and with irrigation communities and project developers. These findings offer a new visual perspective of risk management in rural innovation projects, improving the ability to assess and efficiently mitigate the risks.

Desalination of Seawater for Agricultural Irrigation

Food security concerns, climate change impacts, and increased pressure on conventional water resources have encouraged the agricultural use of nonconventional water resources in the last decade. As a result, desalinated seawater (DSW) has already consolidated its position as an alternative source to increase the supply for crop irrigation in Spain and Israel, where farmers’ acceptance is progressively on the rise. The first experiences in these regions highlighted that DSW agricultural use involves new agronomic, economic, and environmental challenges which require innovative research approaches and imply novel water management strategies. In this Special Issue, eight high-quality papers which present current research trials and study cases, covering a wide range of topics that are relevant when irrigating with DSW, have been selected. The papers came from the three regions of the world that currently have a massive agricultural DSW supply: Southeastern Spain, Israel, and the Canary Islands.

Review: Critical Care : Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet

Author(s): Rankins, Kenneth | Abstract: Today, architecture and urbanism are capital-centric, speculation-driven, and investment-dominated. Many cannot afford housing. Austerity measures have taken a disastrous toll on public infrastructures. The climate crisis has rendered the planet vulnerable, even uninhabitable. This book offers an alternative vision in architecture and urbanism that focuses on caring for a broken planet. Rooted in a radical care perspective that always starts from the given, in the midst of things, this edited collection of essays and illustrated case studies documents ideas and practices from an extraordinarily diverse group of contributors.Focusing on the three crisis areas of economy, ecology, and labor, the book describes projects including village reconstruction in China; irrigation in Spain; community land trust in Puerto Rico; revitalization of modernist public housing in France; new alliances in informal settlements in Nairobi; and the redevelopment of traditional building methods in flood areas in Pakistan. Essays consider such topics as ethical architecture, land policy, creative ecologies, diverse economies, caring communities, and the exploitation of labor. Taken together, these case studies and essays provide evidence that architecture and urbanism have the capacity to make the planet livable, again.

Characterization of the Agricultural Supply of Desalinated Seawater in Southeastern Spain

The increasing shortage of water for crop irrigation in arid and semiarid regions is encouraging the use of non-conventional resources. In the last decade, seawater desalination has consolidated its position as an alternative source to increase the supply for agricultural irrigation in Spain and Israel, where the farmers’ acceptance is progressively rising, despite the supply price being much higher than that of other conventional water sources. This article describes the current situation of desalinated seawater production and supply to agriculture in the southeast of Spain, and analyzes key questions such as its role in regional water planning, the infrastructure needed for conveyance and distribution, the energy requirements, the production and distribution costs, and the final price to farmers. The study is based on descriptive and quantitative data collected from desalination plants and irrigation district managers through technical questionnaires and personal interviews. The results show how seawater desalination is effectively alleviating the regional constraints in the irrigated agriculture supply, and why it is becoming strategic to maintaining food production and socioeconomic development. However, the high-energy requirements and associated costs in comparison with other water sources limit a more widespread use for agriculture, and for this reason desalinated water still only plays a complementary role in most irrigation districts.

Isolation and Molecular Identification of Naegleria australiensis in Irrigation Water of Fuerteventura Island, Spain.

Saline groundwater desalination has recently emerged as an alternative source of irrigation water in arid and semiarid regions due to the gradual reduction in the quantity and quality of conventional water resources for agricultural use. In Fuerteventura Island (Spain), an extremely arid territory in the European Union, brackish water desalination is one of the few available water sources for agricultural production. Very little research has been conducted on the microbiological quality of this water mainly used for irrigation of vegetable crops. Free-living amoebae (FLA) are widely distributed protozoa in the environment and have been isolated from many environmental sources such as dust, soil and water. Among the pathogenic genera included in this group, Acanthamoeba spp., Naegleria fowleri and Balamuthia mandrillaris have been reported to be causative agents of lethal encephalitis, disseminated infections and keratitis. Particularly, Naegleria fowleri is a pathogenic FLA species which causes primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM). In the present study, the presence of pathogenic FLA strains on desalinated brackish water samples for irrigation has been evaluated during 7months. From the analysed samples, only one was positive for Naegleria australiensis. This is the first report of Naegleria spp. in desalinated brackish water for irrigation in Spain.

Methane Emissions from Artificial Waterbodies Dominate the Carbon Footprint of Irrigation: A Study of Transitions in the Food-Energy-Water-Climate Nexus (Spain, 1900-2014).

Irrigation in the Mediterranean region has been used for millennia and has greatly expanded with industrialization. Irrigation is critical for climate change adaptation, but it is also an important source of greenhouse gas emissions. This study analyzes the carbon (C) footprint of irrigation in Spain, covering the complete historical process of mechanization. A 21-fold total, 6-fold area-based, and 4-fold product-based increase in the carbon footprint was observed during the 20th century, despite an increase in water use efficiency. CH4 emissions from waterbodies, which had not previously been considered in the C footprint of irrigation systems, dominated the emission budget during most of the analyzed period. Technologies to save water and tap new water resources greatly increased energy and infrastructure demand, while improvements in power generation efficiency had a limited influence on irrigation emissions. Electricity production from irrigation dams may contribute to climate change mitigation, but the amount produced in relation to that consumed in irrigation has greatly declined. High uncertainty in CH4 emission estimates from waterbodies stresses a need for more spatially resolved data and an improved empirical knowledge of the links between water quality, water level fluctuations, and emissions at the regional scale.

Irrigation engineering in Spain and how it has changed the country’s landscape

Abstract Irrigation is a rural development technique widely extended in, and affecting the landscape of, areas of Mediterranean climate. In Spain, irrigation accounts for ⅔ of all water use. The country has over 3.5 million ha of irrigated land, some 15% of all its agricultural land. Valley bottoms and riversides are the landscapes most commonly associated with irrigation in Spain, followed by peninsular coastal and interior plains, basins, hollows and depressions. This paper describes the engineering infrastructures associated with irrigation, the structures involved in water capture, transport, storage and distribution, and water use and drainage in the irrigated lowlands of Spain. It also examines the environmental impact of such water use. Several descriptors are proposed to describe its association with the landscape.

Modernization of irrigation systems in Spain: review and analysis for decision making

This article presents a method for analyzing the economic feasibility of modernizing irrigation systems. By using substitution relationships between two variables, one can determine irrigation performance and farm profit ​above which modernization would be justified from an economic point of view; ​and also the investments and energy consumption up to which modernization could be considered cost-effective. By means of representative average values, this method is applied to the now widespread conversion from surface irrigation to drip irrigation in Spain. Two conclusions are drawn. First, modernization may, in some instances, be justified only if more productive crop patterns are implemented. Second, saving water is a cheaper option than using an alternative resource only under certain conditions.

Impact of climate and land cover changes on snow cover in a small Pyrenean catchment

The seasonal snow in the Pyrenees Mountains is an essential source of runoff for hydropower production and crop irrigation in Spain and France. The Pyrenees are expected to undergo strong environmental perturbations over the 21st century because of climate change (rising temperatures) and the abandonment of agro-pastoral areas (reforestation). Both changes are happening at similar timescales and are expected to have an impact on snow cover. The effect of climate change on snow in the Pyrenees is well understood , but the effect of land cover changes is much less documented. Here, we analyze the response of snow cover to a combination of climate and land cover change scenarios in a small Pyrenean catchment (Bassies, 14.5 km 2 , elevation range 940–2651 m a.s.l.) using a distributed snowpack evolution model. Climate scenarios were constructed from the output of regional climate model projections, whereas land cover scenarios were generated based on past observed changes and an inductive pattern-based model. The model was validated over a snow season using in situ snow depth measurements and high-resolution snow cover maps derived from SPOT (Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre – Earth Observation Satellite) satellite images. Model projections indicate that both climate and land cover changes reduce the mean snow depth. However, the impact on the snow cover duration is moderated in reforested areas by the shading effect of trees on the snow surface radiation balance. Most of the significant changes are expected to occur in the transition zone between 1500 m a.s.l. and 2000 m a.s.l. where (i) the projected increase in air temperatures decreases the snow fraction of the precipitation and (ii) the land cover changes are concentrated. However, the consequences on the runoff are limited because most of the meltwater originates from high-elevation areas of the catchment, which are less affected by climate change and reforestation.

Irrigated Agriculture in Spain: Diagnosis and Prescriptions for Improved Governance

The objective of this paper is to diagnose the current state of irrigation in Spain in order to support government decision makers to improve the design and application of their plans for action. The analysis implemented shows that this sector faces two main challenges: the decrease in the support given by the Common Agricultural Policy (lower subsidies/incomes) and the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (stricter environmental requirements). While the survival of extensive irrigated agriculture in inland regions depends on farmers producing different crops and modernizing production techniques, littoral regions must respond with technological innovation, especially techniques that save water and help differentiate their products. Within this scenario, a public policy is justified, aimed at improving Spanish irrigation schemes looking forward to better economic performance, an increase in the efficiency of water use and the mitigation of pollution problems.

La problemática génesis del segundo tramo de la acequia real del Xúquer: (orígenes de la «acequia del proyecto» del Duque de Híjar, 1728-1778)

La prolongación de la Acequia de Alzira constituye una de las realizaciones más importantes de la expansión del regadío en la España del s. XVIII. El artículo desvela que esta empresa no fue (en contra de la idea hasta ahora aceptada) fruto de una iniciativa más de la política hidráulica del Estado ilustrado. Se trató de un asunto inicialmente acordado entre la propia comunidad de regantes y el duque de Híjar, cuyo objetivo era llevar las aguas a su señorío de Sollana (Valencia). Posteriormente, debido a la fortísima resistencia de los regantes históricos a hacer efectiva la ampliación por ellos autorizada, el duque adoptó la estrategia de resucitar el rancio privilegio de 1404 y atraerse a su bando a las autoridades estatales, con el señuelo de llevar también el riego a las tierras que el Real Patrimonio poseía en los límites de la Albufera.