Enhancing the Contribution of Isotopic Techniques to the Expansion of Precision rrigation

摘要

In the future, irrigated agriculture will take place under water scarcity, as insufficient water for irrigation is becoming the norm rather than the exception. There is a need therefore to increase the precision of water application with irrigation management. Successful application of the precision irrigation (PI) concept requires one to know the crop water requirements with a certain degree of accuracy and to be able to monitor effectively the water status of the root zone. This paper reviews the use of remote sensing from satellites to characterize irrigation performance for benchmarking areas in need of improvement. The use of remote sensing techniques has progressed substantially in recent years through their capability to detect vegetation properties with very high resolution. Similarly, a new approach which uses cosmic-ray neutrons involving measuring background fast neutrons radiation from cosmic rays and those generated within the soil, moderated by hydrogen atoms in water, is showing promise for obtaining information about area-wide temporal changes in water content in relation to satellite remote sensing observations.