Integrated Methodology for Estimating Water Use in Mediterranean Agricultural Areas

Remote Sensing

Thomas K. Alexandridis¹  Ines Cherif¹  Yann Chemin¹  George N. Silleos¹  Eleftherios Stavrinos¹ 

[1] ¹Laboratory of Remote Sensing and GIS, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Univ. Box 259, Thessaloniki 54124, Greece

关键词: water;    irrigation;    surface energy fluxes;    remote sensing;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs1030445

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Agricultural use is by far the largest consumer of fresh water worldwide, especially in the Mediterranean, where it has reached unsustainable levels, thus posing a serious threat to water resources. Having a good estimate of the water used in an agricultural area would help water managers create incentives for water savings at the farmer and basin level, and meet the demands of the European Water Framework Directive. This work presents an integrated methodology for estimating water use in Mediterranean agricultural areas. It is based on well established methods of estimating the actual evapotranspiration through surface energy fluxes, customized for better performance under the Mediterranean conditions: small parcel sizes, detailed crop pattern, and lack of necessary data. The methodology has been tested and validated on the agricultural plain of the river Strimonas (Greece) using a time series of Terra MODIS and Landsat 5 TM satellite images, and used to produce a seasonal water use map at a high spatial resolution. Finally, a tool has been designed to implement the methodology with a user-friendly interface, in order to facilitate its operational use.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.