Earth Observation for Improving Irrigation Water Management: A Case-study from Apulia Region in Italy

While Europe is by large considered as having adequate water resources, water scarcity and drought is an increasingly frequent and widespread phenomenon in the European Union. The long term imbalance resulting from water demand exceeding available water resources is no longer uncommon (EU, 2012). Objective of this paper is to show how the tools, based on the operational implementation of Earth Observation (EO) technologies can contribute to improve water management at district/river basin level allowing more efficient water use for irrigation in water scarcity environments. The Methodology applied to assess Crop Water Requirement (CWR), is based on spectral measurement in the visible (VIS) and near infrared (NIR) spectral regions from medium/high resolution satellite images, due the strong relationship between the spectral response in those region of the electromagnetic spectrum of cropped surfaces and the corresponding values of evapotranspiration under standard condition (ETp), and crop coefficient Kc, and meteorological data in the Italian study area of Apulia Region. This methodology show how, with Earth Observation (EO) data and geo-spatial tools, it's possible to define the water needs for agriculture in an area, with limited field measurements and that could be applied without knowledge of crop type helping stakeholders to manage water in an optimal manner in water scarcity environments.