Resilience of Irrigated Agriculture to Face the Challenges in Mediterranean Climatic Conditions (Iberian Peninsula)

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Duarte, A.C.
Melian Navarro, Amparo
Ruiz Canales, Antonio

INTECHOPEN

DUARTE, A. C. ; MELIÁN-NAVARRO, A. ; RUIZ CANALES, Antonio (2022) - The resilience of irrigated agriculture to facing the challenges in Mediterranean climatic conditions (Iberian Peninsula). In Irrigation and Drainage – Recent Advances. RiJeka : IN-TECH. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107882 .

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107882

Resilience of Irrigated Agriculture to Face the Challenges in Mediterranean Climatic Conditions (Iberian Peninsula)

Resilience of irrigated agriculture
Mediterranean climate change
Water scarcity
Water-efficient use

GEOBIOTEC—Project UIDB/04035/2020
CERNAS-IPCB—Project UIDB/00681/2020

2022-12-09T15:01:11Z
2022-12-09T15:01:11Z
2022

Climate change scenarios in Mediterranean basin point to a decrease in the amount of annual rainfall and the increased frequency of drought. In this framework of greater water scarcity, an increase in irrigation costs is expected, so its rational and efficient use is an unavoidable issue in modern irrigated agriculture. In the last 60 years in Portugal, it had a great increase in the efficiency of water use in agriculture, accompanied by a great increase in energy consumption, and the variation was 15,000 to 6000 m3/ha.year and 200 to 1500 kWh/ha, respectively. The rational application of fertilizers is a priority, to prevent the contamination of superficial and subterraneous waters, and the process of soil salinization in semi-arid conditions. The pressure of water demand by agriculture implies the use of other water sources. For example, in 2010, the volume of unconventional water resources in Spain rose to 4.540 hm3/year. Of the total used in agriculture, 450 hm3 of water comes from the reuse of treated water, and 690 hm3 comes from desalination. The use of modern/smart technologies in irrigated agriculture, like information and communication technologies, allows the rapid share of information between all the system components and can promote optimized answers at different scales.
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