20 de junio de 2025
Regional datasets of long-term, coarse resolution irrigation estimates from space to foster climate studies
Anthropogenic Water Use
Anthropogenic Water Use primarily consists of agricultural water allocated for irrigation, which represents the largest source of freshwater abstraction at the global scale and thus making irrigation practices the most impactful human activity on the hydrological cycle. I fact, according to the FAO, irrigation accounts for about 70% of all freshwater withdrawals globally (FAO, 2016).
Despite this, irrigation dynamics are inadequately monitored worldwide thus determining a real paradox. Earth Observation offers unprecedent opportunities to address this issue.
As an output of the Climate Change Initiative's Anthropogenic Water Use (AWU) project, experimental datasets of long-term (approximately 20 years), monthly-aggregated irrigation water use estimates at 0.25° resolution have been released. They cover four regions worldwide known to be major irrigation hotspots: the Contiguous United States (CONUS), the Ebro River Basin in north-eastern Spain, the Murray-Darling Basin in south-eastern Australia, and India.
The new products, designed to foster climate studies, were obtained through different methodologies:
- The Soil Moisture(SM)-Inversion method was used to produce five datasets for the four regions, each using a different SM product as input;
- The SM-Delta method was used to produce six datasets for the four regions, each combining different SM and evapotranspiration (ET) products as input;
- The Model-Observation Integration method was applied to the CONUS and Murray-Darling Basin regions, producing three datasets using different irrigated surface maps as input.
Being based on satellite data, the datasets represent an observation of anthropogenic alteration on the water cycle, an added value compared to modeling frameworks that rely on assumptions that can sometimes be too simplistic.
To access the datasets visit: https://zenodo.org/records/14988198
