Irrigation modernization in the Ebro – Aragón region of Spain: Past and future trends

Irrigation modernization has been analyzed in the part of the Aragón region within the Ebro River Basin, in northeastern Spain. A geodatabase was built with 1144 irrigation cartographical units (ICUs) adding up to 476 k ha with access to water and equipped with on-farm irrigation hardware. ICUs were classified in eight categories related to irrigation modernization. The classification revealed that in the past two decades an integral irrigation modernization was achieved in 103 k ha. In a second modernization, 13 k ha were transformed to reduce their dependence on grid energy. A third type of modernization, oriented to the digitalization of irrigation management processes, is only incipient at this time. Public investments in modernization during this period were estimated at 36.8 M€/year. This intense, publicly co-funded, policy-driven process will be far from sufficient to complete the modernization of all irrigated land in the study area in another twenty-year period. In a concurrent process, obsolete, socially unfavored and structurally deficient irrigated areas are being abandoned for irrigation and even for farming. Specific indicators were proposed to approach the abandonment process, revealing that irrigation intensity in temperate climate, riparian ICUs was only 20 %. Irrigation in the study area needs to progress towards sustainable intensification, concentrating agricultural production in areas equipped with the technology and the water management capacities required to face the current agronomical and environmental challenges. The on-going processes of irrigation modernization, new irrigation developments and irrigation abandonment should be coordinated to serve this purpose.