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| Hauptseite > Publikationsdatenbank > Modeling the Water Footprint of Mediterranean Fruit Orchards with CLM5-FruitTree |
| Hauptseite > Publikationsdatenbank > Modeling the Water Footprint of Mediterranean Fruit Orchards with CLM5-FruitTree |
| Poster (Other) | FZJ-2023-00539 |
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2022
Abstract: Land surface models (LSMs) are increasingly being used to study how irrigated agriculture, the largest consumer of fresh water globally, affects crop growth, water resources status, and climate. This is especially of interest in dry and semi-dry agricultural regions such as the Mediterranean, where water scarcity, overexploitation and expected climate change impacts threaten local water resources. The simulation of these agricultural ecosystems necessitates comprehensive crop modules. Such modules must consider local irrigation patterns, crop types, and crop specific management practices to understand their influence on water and energy fluxes under present and future climates. This study explores the water footprint of fruit orchards in the Pinios Hydrological Observatory (PHO) in central Greece, using CLM5-FruitTree, a recent development of the Community Land Model version 5, to include deciduous fruit orchards and associated management practices. Initially, CLM5-FruitTree was setup and validated at field scale using data from two highly instrumented irrigated apple orchards within the PHO. The simulations used local climate, soil, crop management and phenology information. Model results were compared to observed apple yield, sap flow, irrigation amounts, and soil moisture. The latter was obtained from a distributed sensor network measuring soil moisture in three depths at 12 locations per field as well as two cosmic-ray neutron soil moisture sensors. The model was able to reproduce the soil moisture response to irrigation satisfactorily when the local irrigation schedule was considered. The simulated irrigation amount indicated that around 45% less water than the amount applied by the farmer could be used without reduction in yield. This suggests potential improvements in irrigation efficiency by reducing losses through evaporation or deep percolation. However, possible model weaknesses in the representation of soil properties and water fluxes should be further addressed. Successively, a modeling case for the PHO is set up to study the regional irrigation water consumption and the local groundwater aquifer recharge. Results from this study could help local authorities in the definition of water policies and serve as a basis for climate impact studies on regional irrigation management.
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