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Satellite remote sensing for monitoring citrus orchards water requirements at the irrigation district scale

Authors :
Giuseppe Longo-Minnolo
Alessandro D’Emilio
Juan Miguel Ramírez-Cuesta
Daniela Vanella
Serena Guarrera
Giacoma Manerchia Maserà
Simona Consoli
Source :
Journal of Agricultural Engineering (2024)
Publication Year :
2024
Publisher :
PAGEPress Publications, 2024.

Abstract

In Italy, irrigated agriculture is often managed by Reclamation Consortia, but they generally lack the proper tools for monitoring the irrigation water requirements (IWR), forbidding the required sustainability level by the European Water Framework Directive. In this context, the study aims at monitoring the IWR of citrus orchards of a Sicilian irrigation district by implementing a satellite-based methodological approach, during the irrigation seasons 2019 and 2020. Firstly, neural networks were implemented to map the citrus orchards, by using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index time series as input, and obtaining accuracy values of 94% and 87%, in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Then, the satellite-based ArcDualKc model was used to estimate crop evapotranspiration (ETc) over the identified citrus orchards. The estimated ETc rates were validated at the farm scale in terms of irrigation volumes and compared to those obtained by the traditional FAO-56 approach. Then, the spatially distributed irrigation volumes estimated at district level were compared with those declared by the Reclamation Consortium, obtaining absolute error values of 3.28 Mm3 (294%) and 7.08 Mm3 (647%) for the years 2019 and 2020, respectively. The results of the study confirmed the usefulness of the satellite-based methodological approach for determining spatial distributed IWR estimates.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
19747071 and 22396268
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Journal of Agricultural Engineering
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.b44c5da5635641bc9762bff46d8fde8f
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.4081/jae.2024.1623