Impacts of Block‐Rate Energy Pricing on Groundwater Demand in Irrigated Agriculture

Author(s):  
R. Aaron Hrozencik ◽  
Dale T. Manning ◽  
Jordan F. Suter ◽  
Christopher Goemans
Author(s):  
Alexandra Ugryumova ◽  
Mikhail Zamakhovski ◽  
Lyudmila Pautova ◽  
Denis Olgarenko

Scientifically substantiated personnel industry policy contributes to the implementation of an innovative development scenario, provides better results with reduced production costs, which determines the relevance of the studying. The main goal of the work was identified factors and indicators which have regulatory influence on the state and development of the personnel potential of the industry. Diagnostics of the labor potential of land reclamation by federal districts revealed leaders and outsiders of sectoral development. The studying made it possible to justify the steady trend of the shortage of reclamation personnel in comparison with the calculated indicators. Objective and subjective reasons and factors that hinder the effective using of the industry’s personnel potential are distinguished. The concept of industry’s labor potential is clarified. The studying of changes in labor productivity in agriculture has confirmed a twofold increasing in this indicator for the period from 2014 to 2018. Methodological approaches to the indicators of assessing the labor potential of the reclamation industry are substantiated. The groups of socio-economic indicators of the reclamation industry’s effectiveness are identified. The methodology for determining the quantitative characteristics of labor potential on irrigated lands is specified, which is depended on the area of irrigated lands. The labor potential of the reclamation industry in terms of staffing the industry is studied. The main positive and negative trends of the personnel policy and the labor potential’s formation of the agro-industrial complex’s reclamation sector of the Russian Federation are specified, the industry personnel policy is assessed as passive, which does not allow predicting the needs for industry personnel, evaluate staff activities and analyze personnel problems. Highlighted characteristic trends in personnel potential in the federal district and regions of the Russian Federation allow: to develop unified approaches to manage this industry development factor; to develop recommendations to improve the efficiency of advanced training and retraining of personnel in irrigated agriculture. The implementation of the recommendations will contribute to increase the efficiency of the managing the human potential’s process of irrigated agriculture at the level of federal, regional and municipal authorities of the reclamation sector of the agro-industrial complex of Russia.


Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 351
Author(s):  
Bernardo Martin-Gorriz ◽  
Victoriano Martínez-Alvarez ◽  
José Francisco Maestre-Valero ◽  
Belén Gallego-Elvira

Curbing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to combat climate change is a major global challenge. Although irrigated agriculture consumes considerable energy that generates GHG emissions, the biomass produced also represents an important CO2 sink, which can counterbalance the emissions. The source of the water supply considerably influences the irrigation energy consumption and, consequently, the resulting carbon footprint. This study evaluates the potential impact on the carbon footprint of partially and fully replacing the conventional supply from Tagus–Segura water transfer (TSWT) with desalinated seawater (DSW) in the irrigation districts of the Segura River basin (south-eastern Spain). The results provide evidence that the crop GHG emissions depend largely on the water source and, consequently, its carbon footprint. In this sense, in the hypothetical scenario of the TSWT being completely replaced with DSW, GHG emissions may increase by up to 50% and the carbon balance could be reduced by 41%. However, even in this unfavourable situation, irrigated agriculture in the study area could still act as a CO2 sink with a negative total and specific carbon balance of −707,276 t CO2/year and −8.10 t CO2/ha-year, respectively. This study provides significant policy implications for understanding the water–energy–food nexus in water-scarce regions.


Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Kleoniki Demertzi ◽  
Vassilios Pisinaras ◽  
Emanuel Lekakis ◽  
Evangelos Tziritis ◽  
Konstantinos Babakos ◽  
...  

Simple formulas for estimating annual actual evapotranspiration (AET) based on annual climate data are widely used in large scale applications. Such formulas do not have distinct compartments related to topography, soil and irrigation, and for this reason may be limited in basins with high slopes, where runoff is the dominant water balance component, and in basins where irrigated agriculture is dominant. Thus, a simplistic method for assessing AET in both natural ecosystems and agricultural systems considering the aforementioned elements is proposed in this study. The method solves AET through water balance based on a set of formulas that estimate runoff and percolation. These formulas are calibrated by the results of the deterministic hydrological model GLEAMS (Groundwater Loading Effects of Agricultural Management Systems) for a reference surface. The proposed methodology is applied to the country of Greece and compared with the widely used climate-based methods of Oldekop, Coutagne and Turk. The results show that the proposed methodology agrees very well with the method of Turk for the lowland regions but presents significant differences in places where runoff is expected to be very high (sloppy areas and areas of high rainfall, especially during December–February), suggesting that the proposed method performs better due to its runoff compartment. The method can also be applied in a single application considering irrigation only for the irrigated lands to more accurately estimate AET in basins with a high percentage of irrigated agriculture.


Author(s):  
Mireia Fontanet ◽  
Daniel Fernàndez-Garcia ◽  
Gema Rodrigo ◽  
Francesc Ferrer ◽  
Josep Maria Villar

AbstractIn the context of growing evidence of climate change and the fact that agriculture uses about 70% of all the water available for irrigation in semi-arid areas, there is an increasing probability of water scarcity scenarios. Water irrigation optimization is, therefore, one of the main goals of researchers and stakeholders involved in irrigated agriculture. Irrigation scheduling is often conducted based on simple water requirement calculations without accounting for the strong link between water movement in the root zone, soil–water–crop productivity and irrigation expenses. In this work, we present a combined simulation and optimization framework aimed at estimating irrigation parameters that maximize the crop net margin. The simulation component couples the movement of water in a variably saturated porous media driven by irrigation with crop water uptake and crop yields. The optimization component assures maximum gain with minimum cost of crop production during a growing season. An application of the method demonstrates that an optimal solution exists and substantially differs from traditional methods. In contrast to traditional methods, results show that the optimal irrigation scheduling solution prevents water logging and provides a more constant value of water content during the entire growing season within the root zone. As a result, in this case, the crop net margin cost exhibits a substantial increase with respect to the traditional method. The optimal irrigation scheduling solution is also shown to strongly depend on the particular soil hydraulic properties of the given field site.


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