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This research was funded by the Department of Agriculture, Live-stock and Environment of the Regional Government of Aragon and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) of the European Union through the Rural Development Programme. The grant code is #GCP2021001800, and the grant title is " Grupo Operativo Partenariado del Agua de la cuenca del Ebro-Aragon ".Thanks are due to the managers and the governance of the WUAs and General WUAs participating in the consultations, the interviews and the workshop. Their participation has been very important to the research reported in this paper.

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Irrigation modernization in the Ebro - Aragon region of Spain: Past and future trends

Publicado en:Agricultural Water Management. 302 108975- - 2024-09-01 302(), DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2024.108975

Autores: Playan, E; Gimeno, Y; Lorenzo-Gonzalez, M A; Jimenez, A; Lopez-Pardo, J R; Olivan, I; Castillo, R; Carbonell, X; Fabregas, M; Vicente, L M; Galvez, L; Lax, J A; Quilez, D; Balcells, M; Solano, D; Aguaviva, J; Zapata, N

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Irrigation modernization has been analyzed in the part of the Aragon region within the Ebro River Basin, in northeastern Spain. A geodatabase was built with 1144 irrigation cartographical units (ICUs) adding up to 476 k ha with access to water and equipped with on-farm irrigation hardware. ICUs were classified in eight categories related to irrigation modernization. The classification revealed that in the past two decades an integral irrigation modernization was achieved in 103 k ha. In a second modernization, 13 k ha were transformed to reduce their dependence on grid energy. A third type of modernization, oriented to the digitalization of irrigation management processes, is only incipient at this time. Public investments in modernization during this period were estimated at 36.8 M/year. This intense, publicly co-funded, policy-driven process will be far from sufficient to complete the modernization of all irrigated land in the study area in another twenty-year period. In a concurrent process, obsolete, socially unfavored and structurally deficient irrigated areas are being abandoned for irrigation and even for farming. Specific indicators were proposed to approach the abandonment process, revealing that irrigation intensity in temperate climate, riparian ICUs was only 20 %. Irrigation in the study area needs to progress towards sustainable intensification, concentrating agricultural production in areas equipped with the technology and the water management capacities required to face the current agronomical and environmental challenges. The on-going processes of irrigation modernization, new irrigation developments and irrigation abandonment should be coordinated to serve this purpose.

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