Our Project
The challenge: Water Scarcity & Droughts
With climate change affecting the frequency and intensity of droughts and other extreme weather events, it has become more important than ever to develop effective strategies for managing water resources. As climate change intensifies, we witness a growing impact on agriculture, with increased frequency and intensity of droughts, as exemplified in the ongoing challenges faced in 2022. This situation is projected to worsen, particularly in mid-latitude zones, where declining precipitation and rising temperatures pose a threat to crop production. The consequence of these changes is a heightened risk of unfavorable hydrological conditions, impacting agricultural productivity in various climate change scenarios. Additionally, the unstable political and commercial landscape amplifies the need for resilient agricultural production. While small agricultural reservoirs (SmAR) may have a modest capacity compared to large dams, their significance lies in providing essential water access to rural areas, especially when connected to irrigation systems linked to larger reservoirs. Recognizing this, water managers and irrigation consortiums emphasize the importance of expanding the SmAR network as a strategic response to extreme meteorological conditions. Join us as we delve into the pivotal role of water storage, exploring sustainable solutions for a resilient agricultural future.
Main Objectives
This project aims to increase the knowledge on the role of SmAR in agriculture to improve water resource management. The project intends to perform the census of SmAR and water needs for irrigation, to map available water resource volumes and assess water needs at the national scale, and to identify the best siting of new water supplies.
The project will start by developing tailored methodologies for mapping SmAR and deriving their geometry from satellite datasets and in situ surveys. While these data are produced, a further procedure will be derived to build the reservoir storage curve from remote sensing data and available surveys. These two methodologies, developed in parallel and applied in series, will render the first national consistent inventory of SmAR including the volumetric features of small reservoirs, along with the geographic and geometric ones.
From the other side, high resolution, crop-specific maps of harvested areas will be used to produce monthly, spatially disaggregated maps of agricultural water requirements. The irrigation requirements will be calculated via an agro-hydrological model adapted to such data. By coupling the SmAR storage and agricultural demand results, the potential of SmAR in mitigating drought risk will be assessed.
Finally, a best siting methodology will be used to expand the SmAR network. Overall, this project aims at providing high quality data for researchers and decision makers in the field of sustainable agriculture and water management, but also at developing innovative methodologies for the creation, interpretation and utilisation of such data.
