Global Map of Irrigation AreasBelarusThe area equipped for irrigation reached its maximum in the 1980’s at 163 000 ha and declined after to 149 000 ha in 1990, 131 000 ha in 1993 [BY01] and 115 000 ha in 2003 [BY02]. However, because of organizational, economic and technical reasons the irrigation schemes are not operating at full capacity. It can be assumed that the area actually used for irrigation is much lower now compared to the situation in 1990 because irrigation water use declined strongly from 63 Mio m³ in 1985 and 67.3 Mio m³ in 1990 to 5 Mio m³ in 2000 and 11.7 Mio m³ in 2003 [BY03]. No sub-national statistics on area equipped for irrigation have been available. Instead of it, sub-national statistics on irrigation water use for the years 1985 and 1990 [BY03] were used to estimate area equipped for irrigation per region. The fraction of irrigation water use in each region was assumed to represent also the fraction of irrigated land situated in the related regions. Area equipped for irrigation per region estimated that way is documented the table below. Maps showing the location of irrigation schemes were not available. Since it was reported, that irrigation takes place only in excessively drained areas it was decided to distribute irrigated land to cropland and pastures in lowlands along the major rivers. Additionally irrigated areas were assigned to cultivated land in the Polesye region because it was reported that most of the drainage work was concentrated in that area. Cropland and pasture areas were derived from the GLC2000 data base for Northern Eurasia [BY04]. Cells classified as humid grassland, cropland or cropland / grassland were extracted from this land cover data set if located on river valley bottoms. References
[BY01]: FAO. 1999. Irrigation in the countries of the former Soviet Union. FAO, Rome, Italy. Distribution of irrigated area in Belarus by Region:
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