WaterQB – Integrated web-based platform for supporting irrigation management aiming at coping with climate variability and changes

Project FCT 2022.04553.PTDC

Climate variability and climate change impacts on water resources availability in agriculture have greatly contributed to the complex challenge of decision making, particularly in terms of irrigation management. In Portugal, crop water requirements and irrigation demand are expected to increase under climate change, but with different levels of intensity depending on the regions and cropping systems. Consequently, aiming at reducing the vulnerability of agriculture to climate change and climate variability, it is paramount to design and implement integrated and sustainable water management practices, including improvement of the use of water from both irrigation and precipitation, as well as adapting cropping systems and crop management practices. The need for implementing water-saving and sustainable practices, supporting stakeholder and policymaker decisions, is particularly important in agricultural areas characterized by an increased limitation of water availability.

The main goal of WaterQB is to develop a multi-source integrative platform which will constitute the basis of a decision support system for sustainable agricultural water management in Portugal.

Specific goals include:

• ingesting information derived from satellite sensors, with high resolution and high revisiting frequency, with modelling tools aiming at providing an adequate estimation of crop water and irrigation water requirements;
• to use seasonal weather forecasts for improving the predictability of droughts and supporting decision-making on crop water and irrigation water requirements in early stages of the crop season;
• to estimate crop water and irrigation water requirements under diverse climate scenarios conditions;
• to use seasonal weather forecasts and climate change scenarios to support the design of diverse preparedness and coping with water scarcity strategies with the participation of stakeholders involved in water governance and agriculture management;
• to implement operational tools to map information on crop water and irrigation water requirements, while facilitating the communication with stakeholders and allowing to support decision making.

WaterQB multi-source integrative platform will allow overcoming issues related to spatiotemporal variability of the soil, crop type characteristics and associated information, the necessary data integration and aggregation, as well as the reliability of the whole system.

The use of seasonal weather forecasts will allow improving the predictability of droughts and support the design of diverse preparedness and coping with water scarcity measurements. These measurements will be evaluated under climate variability and climate change scenarios and a cost-benefit analysis will be developed and tested.

The WaterQB platform will give stakeholders access to diverse information on water management, using a user-friendly interface to help with the decision-making process.

In summary, WaterQB will develop innovative tools and service facilities that will help the Portuguese agriculture sector to optimize irrigation scheduling, water and economic water productivities, towards more economically and environmentally sustainable production. WaterQB will contribute to a systemic and holistic perspective, integrating technology, creating knowledge and assessment frameworks, within a collaborative multi-scale and multi-actor environment to support irrigation and water management decision-making. The methodology proposed in WaterQB, along with the platform, can also be extended to other Mediterranean countries with similar environmental conditions.