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Context and challenges

The impact of global change is at the heart of what water stakeholders do, and consequently of irrigation-based agriculture. It is crucial to raise awareness and implement common and shared adaptation and mitigation measures.

In the perspective of an increase in average temperatures of 2°C on the horizon, the impacts of climate change will affect the availability of water resources (reduction of flows by 30% on average by 2050). One of the adaptation strategies that has been promoted so far is irrigation. The FAO estimates that 80% of expected food needs in 2025 will be covered by irrigated agriculture. However, the use of this practice is already causing conflicts of use that are likely to worsen with coming droughts. Faced with this emergency situation, it is imperative to acquire a better understanding of the availability, consumption and needs of crops and the uses of agricultural water.

In addition, we also need to design and evaluate scenarios or new adaptation and mitigation strategies that will allow access to irrigation water resources in a future with uncertain resources and changing agriculture. Remote sensing and modelling tools can provide diagnoses and spatialized trajectories of climatic, hydrological, agronomic and socio-economic trends for the creation of scenarios. Integrating stakeholders in territories (managers, management organisations, cooperatives, farmers) carrying out agro-ecological transition and water management initiatives is essential in order to develop scenarios that are credible and accepted by society.

Goals

This multidisciplinary consortium brings together national and international research teams involved in projects related to the management of water resources in agriculture and aims to:

1. carry out state of the art research on this theme centred on irrigated territories, focusing on studies combining remote sensing and modelling;
2. analyse the contribution of remote sensing in the spatialization and construction of scenarios and the identification of changes in practices;
3. study the interest of spatialized models of socio-hydro-systems for scenario evaluation and the link between these models and remote sensing (configuration, calibration and data assimilation).

INRAE units involved

• CESBIO, Toulouse
• G-EAU, Montpellier
• EMMAH, Avignon
• LISAH, Montpellier
• TETIS, Montpellier
• Innovation, Montpellier

External partners : CNRM, Faculty of Sciences Semlalia (Cadi Ayyad University Marrakech), GREEN-TEAM