Demeter
Irrigated agriculture is the main water consumer in Europe. The European Commission’s Water Framework Directive, National Water Plans, and National Irrigation Plans all emphasise the urgent necessity of planning and control tools to assist in the efficient use of water resources. Irrigation Advisory Services (IAS) are the natural management instruments to achieve a better efficiency in the use of water for irrigation. IAS help farmers to apply water according to the actual crop water requirements and thus, to maximise production and cost-effectiveness. Some member states and the Commission have recognised the strategic importance of IAS in sustainable water management and have initiated a process of generalised creation of IAS.
Current IAS, however, are labour- and cost-intensive, yet unable to cover each field in extended areas at regular short time intervals. Earth observation (EO) is naturally destined to fill such a gap, but has so far remained short of being truly applicable in IAS operations. We propose here a range of very practical innovative solutions to overcome these problems.
DEMETER is designed to assess and demonstrate in an operational perspective how the performance and cost-effectiveness of IAS is substantially improved by the incorporation of Earth observation (EO) techniques into their day-to-day operations. The integration of new Information Society Technologies (IT) in the generation and distribution of information will make the EO easily available to IAS and the farmers (the end-users).
Present IAS methodology is based on standards recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). In a first step, therefore, DEMETER will mimic the FAO approach by providing EO-derived crop coefficients, which is based on mature EO technology and is directly usable by the IAS. Maps of crop water requirements are obtained from applying the FAO methodology in a Geographical Information System (GIS) framework. From these maps, spatial information (general and personalized) can be provided to the end-users using IT tools.
DEMETER will overcome the space-time resolution problem so far associated with the use of EO data in irrigation management by synthesising data from all existing high-resolution satellites (Landsat, IRS, Spot, ASTER), using a new inter-satellite cross-calibration procedure. In a second step, advanced EO-derived products on more detailed crop vigour, water stress, and irrigation performance monitoring will be developed and proposed for next-generation IAS.
Finally, DEMETER will provide a modular prototype technology for creating new Space-and-IT-assisted IAS (e-SAIAS) in “high-tech” as well as “low-tech” environments for further Member states and worldwide use.
The project is implemented in three pilot zones in Spain, Italy, and Portugal, respectively. It is driven by the users within the project consortium (the local Irrigation Advisory Services or Irrigation Users Associations and the national Ministries of Agriculture of the three countries). The consortium is completed with members from academic institutions and industry. A high-level Advisory Board, composed of leading experts and policy makers, assists the co-ordinator ( University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain).
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