IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v12y2021i1d10.1038_s41467-021-24508-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Irrigated areas drive irrigation water withdrawals

Author

Listed:
  • Arnald Puy

    (Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and High Meadows Environmental Institute
    University of Bergen)

  • Emanuele Borgonovo

    (Boconi University)

  • Samuele Lo Piano

    (School of the Built Environment, University of Reading)

  • Simon A. Levin

    (Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and High Meadows Environmental Institute)

  • Andrea Saltelli

    (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC))

Abstract

A sustainable management of global freshwater resources requires reliable estimates of the water demanded by irrigated agriculture. This has been attempted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) through country surveys and censuses, or through Global Models, which compute irrigation water withdrawals with sub-models on crop types and calendars, evapotranspiration, irrigation efficiencies, weather data and irrigated areas, among others. Here we demonstrate that these strategies err on the side of excess complexity, as the values reported by FAO and outputted by Global Models are largely conditioned by irrigated areas and their uncertainty. Modelling irrigation water withdrawals as a function of irrigated areas yields almost the same results in a much parsimonious way, while permitting the exploration of all model uncertainties. Our work offers a robust and more transparent approach to estimate one of the most important indicators guiding our policies on water security worldwide.

Suggested Citation

  • Arnald Puy & Emanuele Borgonovo & Samuele Lo Piano & Simon A. Levin & Andrea Saltelli, 2021. "Irrigated areas drive irrigation water withdrawals," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-12, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-24508-8
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24508-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24508-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-021-24508-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sangha, Laljeet & Shortridge, Julie, 2023. "Quantification of unreported water use for supplemental crop irrigation in humid climates using publicly available agricultural data," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).
    2. Laluet, Pierre & Olivera-Guerra, Luis Enrique & Altés, Víctor & Paolini, Giovanni & Ouaadi, Nadia & Rivalland, Vincent & Jarlan, Lionel & Villar, Josep Maria & Merlin, Olivier, 2024. "Retrieving the irrigation actually applied at district scale: Assimilating high-resolution Sentinel-1-derived soil moisture data into a FAO-56-based model," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 293(C).
    3. Zajac, Zuzanna & Gomez, Oscar & Gelati, Emiliano & van der Velde, Marijn & Bassu, Simona & Ceglar, Andrej & Chukaliev, Ordan & Panarello, Lorenzo & Koeble, Renate & van den Berg, Maurits & Niemeyer, S, 2022. "Estimation of spatial distribution of irrigated crop areas in Europe for large-scale modelling applications," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    4. Arnald Puy & Razi Sheikholeslami & Hoshin V. Gupta & Jim W. Hall & Bruce Lankford & Samuele Lo Piano & Jonas Meier & Florian Pappenberger & Amilcare Porporato & Giulia Vico & Andrea Saltelli, 2022. "The delusive accuracy of global irrigation water withdrawal estimates," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-4, December.
    5. Olivera-Guerra, Luis-Enrique & Laluet, Pierre & Altés, Víctor & Ollivier, Chloé & Pageot, Yann & Paolini, Giovanni & Chavanon, Eric & Rivalland, Vincent & Boulet, Gilles & Villar, Josep-Maria & Merlin, 2023. "Modeling actual water use under different irrigation regimes at district scale: Application to the FAO-56 dual crop coefficient method," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 278(C).
    6. Lankford, Bruce A., 2023. "Resolving the paradoxes of irrigation efficiency: Irrigated systems accounting analyses depletion-based water conservation for reallocation," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).
    7. Jingxiu Qin & Weili Duan & Shan Zou & Yaning Chen & Wenjing Huang & Lorenzo Rosa, 2024. "Global energy use and carbon emissions from irrigated agriculture," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-24508-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.