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Project ACTIVITIEs |
A large number of activities have been carried out during the project life time. Some of the most prominents are summarized here. |
| Field measurements |
| The actual consumption of water by crops is rather poorly known and remained difficult to measure till recently. A first and essential step of the projet has been to improve the knowledge of actual evapo-transpiration (ETR). Therefore, two main micrometeorological instruments have been used, both mesuring parameters of the turbulent layer above the canopies of selected crops common in the studied areas : |
- eddy covariance systems (EC)
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| EC systems acquired by each team have been used intensively to monitor the energy and water vapor fluxes (and derive ETR) above different crops, in Jordan (alfa alfa, tomato, potato, cauliflower), in Morocco (wheat, olive and citrus trees), in Syria (traditionnal oasis, sebkha) and in Tunisia (oat, chickpeas). |
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- large apperture scintillometer (LAS)
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| LAS allows to perform measurements of the sensible heat flux over large areas. An emitter and a reciever placed at each corner of the field allow the analysis of the air refraction index fluctuations, using the energy balance approach, ETR can then be inferred. In addition pecific experiments have been conducted to compare the two methods |
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In addition several field campaigns have been carried out to monitor the land cover (statistical sampling of fields), to assess the crop development (biomass, LAI, reflectance,...) and to regionalise the soil information data (field reconnaissance and spectroradiometric measurements)
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| Modelling |
In order to be able to predict ETR over irrigated districts planted with various crops, simple models, usable with satellite data have been targeted. To develop them and to assess how well they perform, three different steps have been followed :
- Implementation and validation of process models (reference) at different reference sites (Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco)
- Intercomparison with the FAO method and other operational methods
- Developement and validation of a simple and robust model
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| Various uses of satellite imagery |
Earth Observation satellites are recording images of the land surface (including the studied areas) since several decades. If the first images were rare and coarse, more and more instruments spin around the planet and an increasing number of images is made available.
Here satellite images have been used to :
- Generalise the heterogenous information available on soils from various reports and maps at different scales and to bridge the gaps between them
- Detect long term changes in the landuse, for instance the increase in irrigated surfaces
- Follow the vegetation development in the cultivated areas to determine the crop calendar and to map the actual land use : percent area occupied by the main crops in select test zones
- Follow the Leaf Area Index (LAI) during the growing season to compute satellite derived crop coefficients and to apply the ETR estimation by the FAO method on a per pixel basis, thus producing ETR maps
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| Training |
| Three international training workshops have been organised during the project, each of them dedicated to a specific theme : micrometeorology, remote sensing, modelling |
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 View downloadable workhops material
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| Results |
| A review of the results « IRRIMED proceedings » is under preparation. Individual papers, thesis, reports, and conference communication can be browsed through the on-line library |
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More : visit the document pages |
