Enhancing Irrigation Management at the Sub-District Level by Combining Irrigation Volume Monitoring Data with an Agro-Hydrological Model

Given the increasing risk of aridity and drought in Southern Europe due to climate change, research is crucial for improving water resources management in agriculture, which is the main user in Italy and worldwide. However, efforts to enhance irrigation management are often hindered by a lack of reliable data on effective irrigation volumes. Therefore, monitoring these volumes is essential, particularly during years of limited water availability. However, monitoring irrigation volumes is time consuming and costly, especially at the sub-district and basin scale. As part of the Agritech project, this study aims to use an agro-hydrological model to analyse the distribution of flows within irrigation systems at the sub-district scale, compared with the measured volumes available in seven pressurised sub-districts selected, among others, within the territory of the Lombardy Region. Preliminary analysis of irrigation use in the selected sub-districts shows that the combination of monitoring data on effective irrigation volumes delivered at the sub-district's intakes with agro-hydrological simulation model can effectively analyse the evolution of water use in agriculture and can help to better investigate the efficiency of the different components of the irrigation system.