ASSESSMENT OF THE FOREST SHELTERBELTS EFFECT ON LOCAL DYNAMICS OF SNOW LAYER, SOIL MOISTURE AND AGRICULTURAL CROP YIELDS AS A SECOND PROTECTIVE FUNCTION

Author(s):  
Maria Magdalena Vasilescu
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruud P. Bartholomeus ◽  
Marjolein H.J. van Huijgevoort ◽  
Arnaut van Loon

<p><span>Agricultural crop yields depend largely on soil moisture conditions in the root zone. Climate change leads to more prolonged drought periods that alternate with more intensive rainfall events. With unaltered water management practices, reduced crop yield due to drought stress will increase. Therefore, both farmers and water management authorities search for opportunities to manage risks of decreasing crop yields. Available groundwater sources for irrigation purposes are increasingly under pressure due to the regional coexistence of land use functions that are critical to groundwater levels or compete for available water. At the same time, treated wastewater from industries and domestic wastewater treatment plants are quickly discharged via surface waters towards sea. Exploitation of these freshwater sources may be an effective strategy to balance regional water supply and agricultural water demand. We present results of a pilot study in a drought sensitive region in the Netherlands, concerning agricultural water supply through reuse of industrial treated wastewater. The Bavaria Beer Brewery discharges treated wastewater to the surface water. Nevertheless, neighboring farmers invest in sprinkler irrigation to maintain their crop production during drought periods. Doing so, increasing pressure is put on the regional groundwater availability. Within a pilot study, a sub-irrigation system has been installed, by using subsurface drains, interconnected through a collector drain, and connected to an inlet control pit for the treated wastewater to enter the drainage system. Sub-irrigation is a subsurface irrigation method that can be more efficient than classical, aboveground irrigation methods using sprinkler installations. Additionally, sub-irrigated water that is not used for plant transpiration recharges the groundwater. We combine both process-based modeling of the soil-plant-atmosphere system and field experiments to i) investigate the amount of water that needs to be and that can be sub-irrigated, and ii) quantify the effect on soil moisture availability and herewith reduced needs for aboveground irrigation from groundwater.</span></p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 904-916 ◽  
Author(s):  
Husayn El Sharif ◽  
Jingfeng Wang ◽  
Aris P. Georgakakos

Abstract Agricultural models, such as the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer cropping system model (DSSAT-CSM), have been developed for predicting crop yield at field and regional scales and to provide useful information for water resources management. A potentially valuable input to agricultural models is soil moisture. Presently, no observations of soil moisture exist covering the entire United States at adequate time (daily) and space (~10 km or less) resolutions desired for crop yield assessments. Data products from NASA’s upcoming Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission will fill the gap. The objective of this study is to demonstrate the usefulness of the SMAP soil moisture data in modeling and forecasting crop yields and irrigation amount. A simple, efficient data assimilation algorithm is presented in which the agricultural crop model DSSAT-CSM is constrained to produce modeled crop yield and irrigation amounts that are consistent with SMAP-type data. Numerical experiments demonstrate that incorporating the SMAP data into the agricultural model provides an added benefit of reducing the uncertainty of modeled crop yields when the weather input data to the crop model are subject to large uncertainty.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Piekarczyk

AbstractWith increasing intensity of agricultural crop production increases the need to obtain information about environmental conditions in which this production takes place. Remote sensing methods, including satellite images, airborne photographs and ground-based spectral measurements can greatly simplify the monitoring of crop development and decision-making to optimize inputs on agricultural production and reduce its harmful effects on the environment. One of the earliest uses of remote sensing in agriculture is crop identification and their acreage estimation. Satellite data acquired for this purpose are necessary to ensure food security and the proper functioning of agricultural markets at national and global scales. Due to strong relationship between plant bio-physical parameters and the amount of electromagnetic radiation reflected (in certain ranges of the spectrum) from plants and then registered by sensors it is possible to predict crop yields. Other applications of remote sensing are intensively developed in the framework of so-called precision agriculture, in small spatial scales including individual fields. Data from ground-based measurements as well as from airborne or satellite images are used to develop yield and soil maps which can be used to determine the doses of irrigation and fertilization and to take decisions on the use of pesticides.


Author(s):  
Luciana Rossato ◽  
Regina C. dos Santos Alvalá ◽  
José A. Marengo ◽  
Marcelo Zeri ◽  
Ana P. M. do Amaral Cunha ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-75
Author(s):  
Gregory Vasilyevich Mokrikov ◽  
Tatiana Vladimirovna Minnikova ◽  
Kamil Shagidullovich Kazeev ◽  
Sergey Ilyich Kolesnikov

Tillage technologies that promote resource conservation and increase crop yields, especially in conditions of dry climate, are increasingly being introduced into the Russian agriculture. However, taking into account a diversity of soil and climatic conditions in Russia, it is necessary to study the agro-ecological state of agro landscapes. In Russia, in recent years, an increase in the yield of winter wheat and sunflower has been observed. From 2014 to 2018 in production conditions in the Rostov Region, the effect of direct sowing technology (No-Till) on the yield of winter wheat and sunflower was studied. The yield of sunflower and winter wheat largely depended on the amount of precipitation during the critical growing season of each agricultural crop. In 2014-2017 the yield of winter wheat in agrocenoses using direct sowing technology increased by 26-114%, sunflower by 27-92% compared with the traditional technology. The authors show that direct seeding compared to traditional technology of dump plowing (traditional tillage) contributes to saving motor fuel, increasing crop yields and lowering the cost of the main crops of the Rostov Region: winter wheat and sunflower.


2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guoting Liang ◽  
Junhui Liu ◽  
Jingmin Zhang ◽  
Jing Guo

Drought has become an important factor limiting crop yields in China. As an important greenhouse horticultural crop in China, the research of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L. cv. Jinpeng No.10) is of great theoretical and practical significance. In the study, four different relative soil moisture contents (74% to 80%, 55% to 61%, 47% to 52%, and 25% to 30%) were used to induce drought stress. We investigated changes in photosynthetic gas exchange, chlorophyll fluorescence, and other related physiological parameters in response to different relative soil moisture contents. Drought inhibited the photosynthesis of tomato significantly, as shown by a clear decline in the net photosynthetic rate. Our results indicated stomatal limitation and nonstomatal limitation were responsible for the photosynthesis reduction.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Mancini ◽  
Chiara Corbari ◽  
Imen Ben Charfi ◽  
Ahmad Al Bitar ◽  
Drazen Skokovic ◽  
...  

<p>The conflicting use of water is becoming more and more evident, also in regions that are traditionally rich in water. With the world’s population projected to increase to 8.5 billion by 2030, the simultaneous growth in income will imply a substantial increase in demand for both water and food. Climate change impacts will further stress the water availability enhancing also its conflictual use. The agricultural sector is the biggest and least efficient water user, accounts for around 24% of total water use in Europe, peaking at 80% in the southern regions.</p><p>This paper shows the implementation of a system for real-time operative irrigation water management at high spatial and temporal able to monitor the crop water needs reducing the irrigation losses and increasing the water use efficiency, according to different agronomic practices supporting different level of water users from irrigation consortia to single farmers. The system couples together satellite (land surface temperature LST and vegetation information) and ground data, with pixel wise hydrological crop soil water energy balance model. In particular, the SAFY (Simple Algorithm for Yield) crop model has been coupled with the pixel wise energy water balance FEST-EWB model, which assimilate satellite LST for its soil parameters calibration. The essence of this coupled modelling is that the SAFY provides the leaf area index (LAI) evolution in time used by the FEST-EWB for evapotranspiration computation while FEST-EWB model provides soil moisture (SM) to SAFY model for computing crop grow for assigned water content.</p><p>The FEST-EWB-SAFY has been firstly calibrated in specific fields of Chiese (maize crop) and Capitanata (tomatoes) where ground measurements of evapotranspiration, soil moisture and crop yields are available, as well as LAI from Sentinel2-Landsat 7 and 8 data. The FEST-EWB-SAFY model has then been validated also on several fields of the RICA farms database in the two Italian consortia, where the economic data are available plus the crop yield. Finally, the modelled maps of LAI have then been validated over the whole Consortium area (Chiese and Capitanata) against satellite data of LAI from Landsat 7 and 8, and Sentinel-2.</p><p>Optimized irrigation volumes are assessed based on a soil moisture thresholds criterion, allowing to reduce the passages over the field capacity threshold reducing the percolation flux with a saving of irrigation volume without affecting evapotranspiration and so that the crop production. The implemented strategy has shown a significative irrigation water saving, also in this area where a traditional careful use of water is assessed.</p><p>The activity is part of the European project RET-SIF (www.retsif.polimi.it).</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1007
Author(s):  
Nereida Rodriguez-Alvarez ◽  
Sidharth Misra ◽  
Mary Morris

Crop growth is an important parameter to monitor in order to obtain accurate remotely sensed estimates of soil moisture, as well as assessments of crop health, productivity, and quality commonly used in the agricultural industry. The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission has been collecting Global Positioning System (GPS) signals as they reflect off the Earth’s surface since August 2015. The L-band dual-polarization reflection measurements enable studies of the evolution of geophysical parameters during seasonal transitions. In this paper, we examine the sensitivity of SMAP-reflectometry signals to agricultural crop growth related characteristics: crop type, vegetation water content (VWC), crop height, and vegetation opacity (VOP). The study presented here focuses on the United States “Corn Belt,” where an extensive area is planted every year with mostly corn, soybean, and wheat. We explore the potential to generate regularly an alternate source of crop growth information independent of the data currently used in the soil moisture (SM) products developed with the SMAP mission. Our analysis explores the variability of the polarimetric ratio (PR), computed from the peak signals at V- and H-polarization, during the United States Corn Belt crop growing season in 2017. The approach facilitates the understanding of the evolution of the observed surfaces from bare soil to peak growth and the maturation of the crops until harvesting. We investigate the impact of SM on PR for low roughness scenes with low variability and considering each crop type independently. We analyze the sensitivity of PR to the selected crop height, VWC, VOP, and Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) reference datasets. Finally, we discuss a possible path towards a retrieval algorithm based on Global Navigation Satellite System-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) measurements that could be used in combination with passive SMAP soil moisture algorithms to correct simultaneously for the VWC and SM effects on the electromagnetic signals.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Karuma ◽  
Peter Mtakwa ◽  
Nyambilila Amuri ◽  
Charles K. Gachene ◽  
Patrick Gicheru

Soil water conservation through tillage is one of the appropriate ways of addressing soil moisture deficit in rainfed agriculture. This study evaluated the effects of tillage practices on soil moisture conservation and crop yields in Mwala District, Eastern Kenya during the long rains (LR) and short rains (SR) of 2012/13. Six tillage systems: Disc plough (MB), Disc plough and harrowing (MBH), Ox-ploughing (OX), Subsoiling – ripping (SR), Hand hoe and Tied Ridges (HTR) and Hand hoe only (H) and, three cropping systems namely, sole maize, sole bean and maize - bean intercrop, were investigated in a split-plot design with four replicates. Data on soil water content was monitored at different weeks after planting and the crop yields at end of each growing season. A three-season average shows that soil water content and crop yields were higher in conventional tillage methods compared to the conservation tillage methods. Long term tillage experiments are thus required at different locations, under various environmental and soil conditions to validate the study findings.


Agriculture ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 292
Author(s):  
Tinghui Wu ◽  
Jian Yu ◽  
Jingxia Lu ◽  
Xiuguo Zou ◽  
Wentian Zhang

Based on hyperspectral imaging technology, rapid and efficient prediction of soil moisture content (SMC) can provide an essential basis for the formulation of precise agricultural programs (e.g., forestry irrigation and environmental management). To build an efficient inversion model of SMC, this paper collected 117 cultivated soil samples from the Chair Hill area and tested them using the GaiaSorter hyperspectral sorter. The collected soil reflectance dataset was preprocessed by wavelet transform, before the combination of competitive adaptive reweighted sampling algorithm and successive projections algorithm (CARS-SPA) was used to select the bands optimally. Seven wavelengths of 695, 711, 736, 747, 767, 778, and 796 nm were selected and used as the factors of the SMC inversion model. The popular linear regression algorithm was employed to construct this model. The result indicated that the inversion model established by the multiple linear regression algorithm (the predicted R2 was 0.83 and the RMSE was 0.0078) was feasible and highly accurate, indicating it could play an important role in predicting SMC of cultivated soils over a large area for agricultural irrigation and remote monitoring of crop yields.


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