1. Site-specific water management in Agriculture Site-specific water management in Mediterranean Agriculture Ioannis Manakos and Christos Karydas Department of Environmental Management Athens, May 2005

2. Site-specific management (SSM) Site-Specific Management (SSM) aims at improving the economics of the agricultural enterprise and protecting the environment through adaptation of input quantities to the real site- specific needs of the field (‘management zones’). Original image (reality) Homogeneous approach Site-specific approach A vineyard in a false-colour combination of a satellite image

3. Use of GIS/RS in Water SSM (WSSM) SSM can be employed for water savings by designating different water management zones in the field. Parameters to be encountered in irrigation water management (management zone designation) are: soil properties crop growth slope and other terrain parameters existing farming practices GIS and Remote Sensing technology (GIS/RS) are introducing combined solutions to the aforementioned.

4. Soil properties with GIS Sampling of soil properties on a grid… …and production of thematic maps with GIS functions

5. Crop growth derived from imagery Heterogeneous crop growth can be detected with Vegetation Indices, e.g, NDVI derived from multi-spectral satellite imagery… NDVI

6. Crop growth derived from a ground sensor … or with a special sensor by registering reflection samples on the ground. Legend Photographic plots 20 60 Rel. coordinates (m) NDVI values:

7. Slopes derived from a DEM Slope of the terrain is crucial in irrigation management In a Mediterranean environment slope is very variant Slope 5% Slope 9% Slope 19% Slope 1% Fields with high slope variance. In one field, slope ranges from 1 to 5% (changing slope class, i.e, from 0-3% to 3-8%).

8. Framework of the special Mediterranean Agriculture conditions Mediterranean Agriculture is characterised by a highly heterogeneous and fragmented environment an undulating relief small mean parcel size low farmer income

9. WSSM for Mediterranean farmers SSM for Mediterranean farmers must be cheap to invest on cheap to apply easy to adopt (user-friendly techniques and short training) beneficial in economizing water and/ or improving the farmer’s income

10. Indicative cost of GIS/RS equipment Cost of a full GIS/RS/Cartography Unit: 25.000 € Cost of a satellite image: 15 € / km 2 (photogrammetric preprocessing in the lab), >100 € / km 2 ready for analysis imagery products) Cost of a special camera for use on the ground: 3.000 € Cost of a GPS: 500 € Cost of operating sensor system mounted on the tractor working in conjunction with board computer (appr. 12.000 €)

11. Implementation on operational basis Collective purchase of equipment and acquisition of data (consequently very low cost per farmer) Processing and data analysis by competent research and academic organisations Result dissemination to the farmers by the local authorities

12. Thanks for your attention!!