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https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1929
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1929
16 Jul 2024
 | 16 Jul 2024

Identifying irrigated areas using land surface temperature and hydrological modelling: Application to Rhine basin

Devi Purnamasari, Adriaan J. Teuling, and Albrecht H. Weerts

Abstract. Information about irrigation with relevant spatiotemporal resolution for understanding and modelling irrigation dynamics is important for improved water resources management. However, achieving a frequent and consistent characterization of areas where signals from rain-fed pixels overlap with irrigated pixels has been challenging. Here, we identify irrigated areas using a novel framework that combines hydrological modeling and satellite observations of land surface temperature. We tested the proposed methodology on the Rhine basin covering the period from 2010 to 2019 at a 1 km resolution. The result includes multiyear irrigated maps and irrigation frequency. Temporal analysis reveals that an average of 159 thousand hectares received irrigation at least once during the study period. The proposed methodology can approximate irrigated areas with R2 values of 0.79 and 0.77 for 2013 and 2016 compared to irrigation statistics, respectively. The method approximates irrigated areas in regions with large agricultural holdings better than in regions with small fragmented agricultural holdings, due to binary classification and the choice of spatial resolution. The irrigated areas are mainly identified in the established areas indicated in the existing irrigation maps. A comparison with global datasets reveals different disparities due to spatial resolution, input data, reference period, and processing techniques. From multiyear analysis, it is evident that irrigation extent is positively correlated with precipitation (r = 0.73, p-value = 0.0163) and less with potential evapotranspiration.

Competing interests: Two of the (co)-authors are members of the editorial board of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences and the contact author has declared none other competing interests

Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this preprint. The responsibility to include appropriate place names lies with the authors.
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Journal article(s) based on this preprint

19 Mar 2025
Identifying irrigated areas using land surface temperature and hydrological modelling: application to the Rhine basin
Devi Purnamasari, Adriaan J. Teuling, and Albrecht H. Weerts
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1483–1503, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1483-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1483-2025, 2025
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The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.

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This paper introduces a method to identify irrigated areas by combining hydrology models with...
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