Use of soil and climate data to assess the risk of agricultural drought for policy support in Europe.

This paper describes the use of soil and climatic data for assessing the risk of drought in Europe. Soil moisture regimes are defined for soil classification purposes and these can be used to delineate areas with the same type of soil climate. Maps showing the distribution of arid soils in USA and dry areas in Southern Europe are presented. In the case of agricultural drought, it is the soil water available to plants (SWAP) that is the most important soil factor in assessing this risk and a simple model for estimating this is described. This model can be linked to spatial and point data from the European Soil Database. In the absence of sufficient soil water retention measurements, preliminary maps of SWAP in Europe have been produced using pedotransfer rules. The study concludes that basic soil maps can be used to identify some areas where agricultural drought is likely to be a problem. However more precise modelling of droughtiness, based on interactions of soil available water with the average soil moisture deficit, estimated from meteorological data, is needed, to support policy making today

Integrated monitoring and trans national coordination to support sustainable land management strategies: ideas for new joint Euro-Mediterranean initiatives: special EU report

The aim ofthis paper is double: I. To discuss and comment some of the achievement reached by the MEDCOASTLAND Thematic Network in relation to desertification indicators; 2. To present some initiatives, recently accomplished or currently on-going at the European/Mediterranean level, which could be used as examples, or exported, in the frame of new, integrated joint Euro-Mediterranean initiatives which could be promoted with reference to the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme (7th FP). The projects considered are MEDRAP, related to "intemational and regional coordination and harmonisation" and DESERTWATCII, related to "data based operational monitoring system"

A review of coupled hydrologic and crop growth models

Abstract Coupling hydrologic and crop models is becoming an increasingly important approach in the development of agro-hydrologic theme. Scientists and decision makers working to address issues in the areas of resource conservation and agricultural productivity are interested in the complementary processing of the two coupled systems. The objective of the present work is to review relevant studies related to hydrologic and crop models coupling, and to analyze the domain applicability, limitations, and other considerations

Multifaceted Impacts of Sustainable Land Management in Drylands : A Review

Peer reviewe

GEO-6 assessment for the pan-European region

Through this assessment, the authors and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) secretariat are providing an objective evaluation and analysis of the pan-European environment designed to support environmental decision-making at multiple scales. In this assessment, the judgement of experts is applied to existing knowledge to provide scientifically credible answers to policy-relevant questions. These questions include, but are not limited to the following:• What is happening to the environment in the pan-European region and why?• What are the consequences for the environment and the human population in the pan-European region?• What is being done and how effective is it?• What are the prospects for the environment in the future?• What actions could be taken to achieve a more sustainable future?<br/

Mapping Spatio-Temporal Soil Erosion Patterns in the Candelaro River Basin, Italy, Using the G2 Model with Sentinel2 Imagery

This study aims at mapping soil erosion caused by water in the Candelaro river basin, Apulia region, Italy, using the G2 erosion model. The G2 model can provide erosion maps and statistical figures at month-time intervals, by applying non data-demanding alternatives for the estimation of all the erosion factors. In the current research, G2 is taking a step further with the introduction of Sentinel2 satellite images for mapping vegetation retention factor on a fine scale; Sentinel2 is a ready-to-use, image product of high quality, freely available by the European Space Agency. Although only three recent cloud-free Sentinel2 images covering Candelaro were found in the archive, new solutions were elaborated to overcome time-gaps. The study in Candelaro resulted in a mean annual erosion rate of 0.87 t ha&minus;1 y&minus;1, while the autumn months were indicated to be the most erosive ones, with average erosion rates reaching a maximum of 0.12 t ha&minus;1 in September. The mixed agricultural-natural patterns revealed to be the riskiest surfaces for most months of the year, while arable land was the most extensive erosive land cover category. The erosion maps will allow competent authorities to support relevant mitigation measures. Furthermore, the study in Candelaro can play the role of a pilot study for the whole Apulia region, where erosion studies are rather limited

Pricing Unmetered Irrigation Water under Asymmetric Information and Full Cost Recovery

The objective of this study is to define an efficient pricing scheme for irrigation water in conditions of unmetered water use. The study is based on a principal-agent model and identifies a menu of contracts, defined as a set of payments and share of irrigated area, able to provide incentives for an efficient use of the resource by maximizing social welfare. The model is applied in the case study of the Çukas region (Albania) where irrigation water is not metered. The results demonstrate that using a menu of contracts makes it possible to define a second best solution that may improve the overall social welfare derived from irrigation water use compared with the existing pricing structure, though, in the specific case study, the improvement is small. Furthermore, the results also suggest that irrigation water pricing policy needs to take into account different farm types, and that appropriate contract-type pricing schemes have a potential role in providing incentives to farmers to make irrigation choices to the social optimum

Monitoring and modelling the hydrological behaviour of a reclaimed wadi basin in Egypt

We analysed the hydrological behaviour of a wadi basin in Egypt, whose channel was modified into levelled terraces for cultivation. A yearly data set was used, consisting of weather data, distributed water content measurements in the terraces of the wadi channel, and run-off discharges at the wadi outlet. A modelling approach combining a run-off model and an agro-hydrological model was tested to simulate, respectively, the water stored in the wadi stream bed after a single rainfall event and the depletion of the stored water by evapotranspiration in the period between two subsequent rainfall events. Calibration and validation of the run-off model were based on both basin outlet run-off and distributed water storage measurements. High Nash–Sutcliffe efficiencies were obtained for both distributed channel water storage and outlet discharges, showing the importance of having available distributed storage measurements, besides basin outlet discharges, to obtain more robust model predictions. The soil–plant–atmosphere model was not calibrated as the parameters for the hydraulic properties, all coming from direct measurements, proved to describe effectively the distributed water storages measured in the terraces during the monitoring campaign. It was observed that the terraces (about 100,000 m 3 ) may store up to 50,000 m 3 of water. By considering that in the soil considered, the water content at the wilting point is about 5% and that in July, the soil profile is still able to retain about 40% of the initial volume, most of the water stored may be used by crops for the whole spring–summer period