Geomatic Tools For Water Management in A Community Irrigation System, Cruz Del Eje, Córdoba. - Geomatic Tools For Water Management in A Community Irrigation System, Cruz Del Eje, Córdoba. - Open Access Pub

An integral and efficient management of water for irrigation requires the adoption of new technologies to respond to the challenges imposed by the agricultural sector, in particular to stabilize production through the adequate use of water resources. In this sense, it is vital to characterize and know the amount of area which is under irrigation in such agricultural systems. In this paper we show the use of satellite information data in a GIS environment with the objective of characterizing the productive areas under irrigation in Cruz del Eje, Córdoba, Argentina in 3 types: A) irrigation region B) irrigable area and C) actually irrigated area. Multitemporal image indices and segmentation were used for this characterization and then maps of these 3 types of agricultural land cover were generated. Additionally, we present simple satellite images processing and classification procedures to increase the knowledge about the land cover over this irrigated area. Finally, we discuss how this geographically explicit information generated could be useful for the decision-making process on current irrigated areas and on the potential of productive systems through community irrigation systems. DOI10.14302/issn.2639-3166.jar-19-2735 The use of water as an asset of great utility and high abundance in absolute terms, was globally extended until the 1970s 1. With the advent of intensive agriculture, the concept of water as a resource changed from being only vital and irreplaceable to the most important factor of production and, therefore, an asset subject of appropriation. The irrigated area worldwide quintupled from the second half of the 20th century onwards, reaching 267 million hectares under irrigation 2. This area represents a 15% of the total cultivated area and it is estimated that 37% of the total crop production is obtained in irrigated areas 3. In Argentina, the arid and semi-arid regions were the ones that used irrigation the earliest, first through the use of surface water resources and then with the use of underground ones. These areas show how irrigated agriculture consumes a great percentage of total catchment water, a percentage that exceeds 90%. These data along with the potentially irrigable area of Argentina (more than 6 million ha, currently cultivated under irrigation only 1,635,000 ha) places irrigation as a keystone for water and territory management, demanding adequate and sustainable planning. Argentina does not have reliable and updated statistics on irrigated areas, and less so on its characterization, technological and temporal evolution