In:
Earth System Science Data, Copernicus GmbH, Vol. 15, No. 4 ( 2023-04-05), p. 1555-1575
Abstract:
Abstract. Irrigation water use represents the primary source of
freshwater consumption by humans. The amount of water withdrawals for
agricultural purposes is expected to further increase in the upcoming years
to face the rising world population and higher living standards. Hence,
effective plans for enacting a rational management of agricultural water use
are urgent, but they are limited by knowledge gaps about irrigation.
Detailed information on irrigation dynamics (i.e., extents, timing, and
amounts) is generally lacking worldwide, but satellite observations can be
used to fill this gap. This paper describes the first regional-scale and high-resolution (1 and 6 km) irrigation water data sets obtained from satellite observations. The
products are developed over three major river basins characterized by
varying irrigation extents and methodologies, as well as by different
climatic conditions. The data sets are an outcome of the European Space
Agency (ESA) Irrigation+ project. The irrigation amounts have been
estimated through the SM-based (soil-moisture-based) inversion approach over
the Ebro river basin (northeastern Spain), the Po valley (northern Italy),
and the Murray–Darling basin (southeastern Australia). The
satellite-derived irrigation products referring to the case studies in
Europe have a spatial resolution of 1 km, and they are retrieved by
exploiting Sentinel-1 soil moisture data obtained through the RT1
(first-order Radiative Transfer) model. A spatial sampling of 6 km is
instead used for the Australian pilot area, since in this case the soil
moisture information comes from CYGNSS (Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite
System) observations. All the irrigation products are delivered with a
weekly temporal aggregation. The 1 km data sets over the two European
regions cover a period ranging from January 2016 to July 2020, while the
irrigation estimates over the Murray–Darling basin are available for the
time span April 2017–July 2020. The retrieved irrigation amounts have
been compared with benchmark rates collected over selected agricultural
districts. Results highlight satisfactory performances over the major part
of the pilot sites falling within the two regions characterized by a
semiarid climate, namely, the Ebro and the Murray–Darling basins, quantified
by median values of RMSE, Pearson correlation r, and bias equal to
12.4 mm/14 d, 0.66, and −4.62 mm/14 d, respectively, for the Ebro basin
and to 10.54 mm/month, 0.77, and −3.07 mm/month, respectively, for the
Murray–Darling basin. The assessment of the performances over the Po valley
is affected by the limited availability of in situ reference data for
irrigation. The developed products are made available to the scientific
community for use and further validation at
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7341284 (Dari et al., 2022a).
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
1866-3516
DOI:
10.5194/essd-15-1555-2023
Language:
English
Publisher:
Copernicus GmbH
Publication Date:
2023
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2475469-9
Permalink
