Global Map of Irrigation Areas

Ireland

The irrigated area in Ireland is about 1100 ha and consists of about 500 ha early potatoes, 500 ha vegetables and 100 ha strawberries in plastic tunnels. Most of the irrigated area is located in the southern, eastern and south-eastern regions of the country [IE01]. No sub-national statistics on irrigated area have been available for Ireland. Therefore the potato growing area of the counties located in the south, east or south-east was extracted from the Agricultural Census 2000 [IE02] and it was assumed that the irrigated area is proportional to the potato growing area (in total 2122 ha). Area equipped for irrigation estimated that way is shown in the table below.

Area equipped for irrigation was equally distributed over all polygons classified as non-irrigated arable land (211) or complex cultivation patterns (242) in the Corine 2000 land cover database for Europe [IE03].

References

[IE01]: Baldock, D., Caraveli, H., Dwyer, J., Einschütz, S., Petersen, J.E., Sumpsi-Vinas, J. & Varela-Ortega, C. 2000. The environmental impacts of irrigation in the European Union. A report to the Environment Directorate of the European Commission, 147 pp., available at: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/agriculture/, 07/07/2006. [IE02]: Central Statistics Office Ireland. 2002. Census of Agriculture Main Results, June 2000. Dublin, Ireland, 96 pp., available at: http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/pr_agrifishpubshardcopies.htm, 31/07/2006. [IE03]: 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 potato cropping area and estimated irrigated area in Ireland by County: