Global Map of Irrigation Areas

Czech Republic

During the last century irrigation infrastructure was built on about 155 000 ha of agricultural land. The area equipped for irrigation was at its maximum in the period 1995-1997 at 132 401 ha. The area weighted average age of the irrigation systems is 26 years [CZ01]. The area actually irrigated was largest in 1988 (99 115 ha) and declined later to about 48 000 ha at the beginning of the 1990s, about 35 000 ha in the mid 90s and 16 238 ha in 1997 [CZ02]. Irrigation is nowadays only being used for crops that cannot be grown without irrigation or for those for which irrigation generates high added value (vegetables, hop-fields, orchards, vineyards and potatoes). EUROSTAT reported areas actually irrigated of 16 870 ha in 2003 and 17 320 ha in 2005 [CZ03]. The low figures of area actually irrigated in the last ten years indicate that a large part of the former irrigation infrastructure seems to be dead and no longer useable. Therefore area equipped for irrigation was estimated for eight regions by choosing the maximum of the irrigable areas as reported by EUROSTAT for the years 2003 and 2005 [CZ03]. Area equipped for irrigation per region estimated that way is summing up to 50 590 ha and is shown in the table below.

The main irrigation areas of the country were digitized from an irrigation map. The map showed areas in operation, areas under construction and planned irrigation areas [CZ04]. Additionally a large irrigation area was digitized in the surrounding of Znojmo in South Moravia [CZ05]. Irrigated area was then assigned to cultivated land extracted from the Corine 2000 land cover data base for Europe [CZ06] using the following priorities:

In the regions of Jihozápad and Strední Morava irrigated area was assigned to all areas classified as vineyards (221), fruit trees and berry plantations (222) or complex cultivation patterns (242) because none of the digitized irrigation areas was located within these regions.

References

[CZ01]: Štastná, M., Miškovský, J., Cermák, J., Doležal, F., Zavadil, J. & Spitz, P. 2006. Country report from Czech Republic. In: Dirksen, W. and Huppert, W. (ed.). Irrigation sector reform in Central and Eastern European countries. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Eschborn, Germany, 103-118.
[CZ02]: Miskovsky, J. 2002. Privatisation of irrigation systems in the Czech Republic. EWRG letter 12, 3-6.
[CZ03]: Statistical Office of the European Communities (EUROSTAT). 2006. Irrigation by regions. Online data base (available at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu), 07/07/2006.
[CZ04]: Framji, K.K., Garg, B.C. & Luthra, S.D.L. 1981. Irrigation and drainage in the world. Third edition. Vol. I, p. 304. New Delhi, ICID.
[CZ05]: Ministry of Agriculture. 2004. General information about water management in the Czech Republic. Prague, Czech Republic, 14 pp., available at: http://www.mze.cz/, 19/07/2006.
[CZ06]: EEA. 2005. Corine land cover 2000 - vector by country (CLC2000), version 1. (available at: http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/dataservice/metadetails.asp?id=667).

Distribution of irrigated area in the Czech Republic per NUTS-1 region: